EARLY WORD:
"It's a conservative's fantasy to imagine that a Senate staffer for a leading liberal (Metzenbaum) was secretly absorbing common sense for years until he could not take it anymore and broke with liberalism. That's what Keith Thompson actually did, and he relates it all now with verve and conviction. He is most welcome to the fold!"

— Mona Charen, author of author of Do-Gooders and Useful Idiots

"Keith Thompson's refreshingly candid admissions about the plain and simple wrongness of the Left ring with the sincerity of a genuine convert and will make conservatives stand up and cheer. Welcome to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Keith."

— David Limbaugh, author of Bankrupt, Persecution, and Absolute Power

"Keith Thompson has written an arresting and witty memoir of the follies of the left. You don't want to miss it."

— David Horowitz, author of Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey

"Drawing on his own experience as a reporter, father, and independently minded citizen, Keith Thompson chronicles his growing disenchantment with, and eventual break from, today's illiberal and idea-free left. The result — honest, funny, smartly empirical, and compulsively readable — is a book that will appeal not just to conservatives but to all Americans who don't think Nancy Pelosi and her ilk know what's best for the nation."

— Brian C. Anderson, author of South Park Conservatives and senior editor of City Journal.

“FANTASTIC and more importantly intellectually honest. I only disagree with the title, Keith Thompson didn't leave the left, they left him, and other classical liberals, a long time ago.”

— Rusty Humphries, nationally syndicated radio talk show host

"Keith Thompson takes readers through the most important moments in recent political history and exposes how liberals have abandoned principles such as equality, individual rights, and political freedom. Thompson’s compelling journey reveals not just where we have been, but where we are going as a nation. Leaving the Left is a timely and important book.”

— Carrie Lukas, Vice President of Policy, Independent Women’s Forum

"I read Leaving the Left and realized I'd traveled the same path. I never knew being a liberal meant selling out my country or finding phony common cause with murderers. There are millions of us too. Thanks Keith for helping us stand up."

— Phil Hendrie, host of The Phil Hendrie Show and co-star of the former NBC sitcom "Teachers"

"As a former liberal myself, I commend Keith Thompson for having the courage to see the world as it really is instead of how liberals want it to be. His transformation makes me proud to know him."

— La Shawn Barber, blogger at La Shawn Barber's Corner

A RARE CHANCE TO HEAR AN HONEST LIBERAL ADMIT: “I WAS WRONG.”

"Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's 'peace' movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering third world country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom." — Keith Thompson

And so, beginning with his 2005 San Francisco Chronicle essay also titled "Leaving the Left," Keith Thompson has defected, terminating a relationship forged as the nation’s youngest McGovern delegate in 1972 and later as a staffer for the liberal Senator Howard Metzenbaum.

A baby-boomer father, outdoorsman, and Northern California writer, Thompson spent decades considering himself a "liberal," and opposing "conservatives" ... until he had to confess that the racism, sexism, and oppression he deplored had taken root in the modern day Left.

In this remarkably frank memoir, Thompson admits to the many occasions before the liberation of Iraq when he - and probably many other people like him - felt ashamed of the Left ... but stood silently by rather than criticize it. For example, when:

• Novelist Norman Mailer dismissively compared the World Trade Center deaths to “traffic accidents.”

• Senator Ted Kennedy claimed Abu Ghraib had simply "reopened under new management" when American troops took over from Saddam.

• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was "lynched" on television by white liberals who despised a black conservative, while feminists rushed to defend the flimsy sexual harassment allegations of Anita Hill.

• Bill Clinton robbed children all over the world of their innocence with his tawdry Monica Lewinsky escapades, and taught them how to perjure themselves under oath ... while Hillary Clinton tacitly endorsed the whole sordid affair.

• Terry Schiavo starved to death because liberal judges refused to acknowledge her basic right to life.

Thompson writes that "the single most important thing a genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house that the left has built." The good news is that more and more people are doing just that.