LOCATED FOUR BLOCKS from the White House, the National Archives are best known as the home of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The two founding documents are beautifully displayed in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom. Every day tourists line up for the exhibit, and after they're done, some step into the Archives Shop on their way out.

Most of what you find in the Archives Shop is what you would expect in a kitschy modern museum store. Reproductions of Confederate currency are on sale next to Lewis and Clark action figures (the set includes a bonus figure--Sacagawea!) and snow globes with a picture of Nixon greeting Elvis. There are T-shirts and posters and, of course, books.

Lots and lots of books, from The Story of the Civil War Coloring Book to Michael Beschloss's The Conquerors, John Keegan's Intelligence War and solid biographies of Jefferson, Lincoln and LBJ.

And then there are the books on George W. Bush.

At the National Archives, although you can find not one neutral or admiring book on the current president (there are many in print, by the way), you can find Helen Caldicott's The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex, not to mention Kevin Phillips's American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush.

The Phillips book is merely an angry polemic against the president, but Ms. Caldicott's--excuse me, Dr. Caldicott's--work is the product of a bona-fide conspiracy theorist. She refers to the "2000 Republican presidential coup" and the "right-wing

At the store's entrance is a display of books on current events, prominently featuring Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia, an anthology of left-wing essays from such luminaries as Bill Christison. He asks, by way of arguing against the war in Afghanistan: "Is it clear that all Taliban members were accomplices of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? And if they were accomplices, is it not true that the better legal systems of the world do not punish accomplices to a crime as severely as the criminals themselves?"

A section in the rear of the shop features John Prodos's Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War, Paul Krugman's The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century and Charles Lewis's The Buying of the President 2004. These august titles are all just prologue to the three--count 'em, three--volumes by Noam Chomsky, also on offer.

But the selections are not all glamorous polemics. There is academic tedium too. A Badly Flawed Election: Debating Bush v. GoreI>, the Supreme Court and American Democracy" sits on the National Archives' shelves. Edited by Ronald Dworkin, the collection features essays by Lani Guinier, Laurence Tribe, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and, from the right, one supposes, Richard Posner. As Floyd Abrams testifies on the dust jacket: "For those of us who can't--or won't--put the 2000 election and, in particular, Bush v. Gore, behind us, this book is a sparkling tonic. And for those who want to 'move on,' the book will stop them in their tracks."