title: Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America
author:  Kate Zernike 
description: <DIV><DIV><DIV>&#8220;Required reading for anyone who wants to understand the Tea Party movement.&#8221;&#8212;Gail Collins, <I>The New York Times</I></DIV><DIV>&#160;</DIV><DIV>&#8220;Illuminating&#8230; a picture of how different some Tea Partiers are from the Republican establishment&#8217;s view of the movement.&#8221;&#8212;<I>The New York Times Book Review</I></DIV><DIV>&#160;</DIV><DIV><DIV>&#8220;[Zernike&#8217;s] concise, elegantly written book is a refreshing reminder of what traditional journalism &#8212; so often despised and discounted these days &#8212; can contribute to the public conversation. . . . A convincing portrait of the [tea party] movement&#8217;s most ardent activists.&#8221;&#8212;<I>Los Angeles Times</I></DIV></DIV><DIV>&#160;</DIV><DIV>&#8220;A brisk chronicle of the people who have streamed to the protests [and] flocked to the polls.&#8221;&#8212;<I>The New Republic</I></DIV><DIV>&#160;</DIV><DIV>&#8220;The most informative and readable.&#8221;&#8212;<I>The Hill</I></DIV></DIV><DIV>&#160;</DIV><DIV>&#8220;The beauty of <I>Boiling Mad</I> is that it&#8217;s room-temperature calm. With fresh and surprising reporting, Kate Zernike cuts through the hype on both sides to show the Tea Party as it really is, not as partisans depict it. It&#8217;s a complete, balanced, incisive and important account of a reactionary movement that&#8217;s changing the country.&#8221;&#8212;Jonathan Alter, author of <I>The Promise: President Obama, Year One<BR></I></DIV></DIV>
zlib_text: Chapter 1
  
  It was Miss Somers's turn to make the tea. Miss Somers was the newest and the
  most inefficient of the typists. She was no longer young and had a mild
  worried face like a sheep. The kettle was not quite boiling when Miss Somers
  poured the water on to the tea, but poor Miss Somers was never quite sure when
  a kettle was boiling. It was one of the many worries that afflicted her in
  life.
  
  She poured out the tea and took the cups round with a couple of limp, sweet
  biscuits in each saucer.
  
  Miss Griffith, the efficient head typist, a grey-haired martinet who had been
  with Consolidated Investments Trust for sixteen years, said sharply: "Water
  not boiling again, Somers!" and Miss Somers's worried meek face went pink and
  she said, "Oh dear, I did think it was boiling this time."
  
  Miss Griffith thought to herself. "She'll last for another month, perhaps,
  just while we're so busy... But really! The mess the silly idiot made of that
  letter to Eastern Developments - a perfectly straightf