What were you doing last week? We were pretty busy following some exciting news from Michael Bennet, US Senator from Colorado and author of our forthcoming The Land of Flickering Lights, who announced that… well, we’ll let him tell you. Here’s the Senator appearing on “CBS This Morning” on May 2nd:

“I’ve spent the last couple of years writing a book about our politics over the last ten years or so,” Bennet explains, “and I became convinced in that process that… if we keep going down this road, we’re going to be the first generation of Americans to leave less opportunity, not more, to the next generation. I just need to do everything I can do to make sure that we don’t do that.”

Later that same day, he appeared on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show”:

On our broken and divided politics, Bennet says, “The whole system is based on the idea not that we will agree with each other but we will disagree with each other… What we have to do is figure out how to go back to a place where we don’t expect unanimity, we don’t have a tyrant or a king to tell us what to think. We expect to have division and disagreements. How we fashion those disagreements into imaginative and durable solutions is the work of a democracy — and we have completely lost it in our time.”

There was also this excellent story at CNN.com, noting that “Bennet, a measured, wonky Democrat who is known for delving deeply into policy, plans to run a campaign centered around driving economic growth by expanding the Child Tax Credit, enacting paid family and medical leave, raising the minimum wage, modernizing the country by combatting climate change and investing in infrastructure.”

But perhaps the best way of getting to know the Senator is to read The Land of Flickering Lights. Bennet’s first book, it’s already been called “a forceful argument that patriotism, hard work, and belief in the common good can revive a prosperous and powerful democracy” by Kirkus Reviews. Bennet explains the title in a stirring passage from the book:

“We had become the land of flickering lights, in which the standard of success was not what we were doing for the next generation of Americans, or to enhance our role in the world, but instead whether we had kept government open for another few minutes.”

It’s the book’s subtitle, however, that provides a clearer explanation of why he’s running: Bennet’s cause, quite simply, is “restoring America in an age of broken politics.”

The Land of Flickering Lights hits bookstores on June 25th. Until then, you can follow the Senator on Twitter and Instagram, keep an eye out for his campaign messaging, or pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, or another independent bookseller.