The sixteen-novel Left Behind series of evangelical thrillers is at least as influential a text in the annals of latter-day prophecy belief as the Book of Revelation. Which, of course, happens to furnish source material for the series’ intensively literalist accounting of the rapture, the tribulation, and the final judgment. The series, by Baptist preacher-turned-culture-warrior Tim LaHaye and evangelical sports and comics writer Jerry Jenkins, debuted in 1995 and concluded in 2007, and not counting the raft of prequels, children’s adaptations, study guides, and audiobooks that have come in its wake, it has sold more than 65 million copies.

When people think of someone with an “addictive personality,” the image typically isn’t a pretty one. “When is an addict lying?” goes a joke told by addiction counselors: the snide answer is “when his lips are moving.” Media portrayals of addiction tend to depict people with addictions as “fiends” or “demons” whose debauchery is driven by a ravenous hedonism, not a human or understandable search for safety and comfort. Consequently, the “addictive personality” is seen as a bad one: weak, unreliable, selfish, and out of control.

The following is an excerpt from the new book Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America, by Tamara Draut, an executive at the progressive think tank Demos.

"How much of this book is about your own life?" All novelists, even those who write about horny Centaurs or plasma cannons, have to come up with a standard response to that prickly, earnest question. As someone who has been accused of navel-gazing on the Internet, who has written a few personal essays and now has published a novel in which the protagonist shares many of the same biographical details as the author, I have certainly come to expect it.

Alexandra Lebenthal, CEO of financial firm Lebenthal & Co., just published her first novel, The Recessionistas, about Wall Street elites coping with the great economic downturn. Let's meet John Cutter, the sort of hedge fund jerk we love to hate.