CNN

Watch CNN's Jack Cafferty discuss how his past shaped his unique perspective on world events.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – CNN commentator Jack Cafferty gets personal and political.

The Situation Room's resident contributor is out with a new book Monday detailing his thoughts on the current state of American politics and the events in his life that shaped his perspective of world events.

In his book, “It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars, and Losers Who Are Hurting America,” Cafferty details a part of his life he has rarely discussed in public before – his turbulent childhood and years spent as an alcoholic. (Read an exclusive excerpt)

"Very little of my back-story qualifies as Hallmark Card material, but it may help you to make sense of the way I see and interpret what's going on around me," he writes in the book. "My folks were alcoholics who, between them, were married 11 times. It would have been an even dozen, but my dad accidentally killed one of his fiancées."

Speaking with CNN's Wolf Blitzer Monday, Cafferty explained he wrote about his background at length so "people who watch this program and listen to the things I say might have some sense of where this ongoing questioning of authority that I have comes from."

"It's probably rooted in the fact that I learned pretty early on – because of the environment I was in – not to trust everything you see and hear because it's likely a good portion of it isn't going to turn out to be true," he added.

And of course, no book by Jack Cafferty would be complete without detailing his frustration of Washington politicians.

"We want our troops home, but we also want a new army of elected officials to march into Washington and take a fresh, uncorrupted look at the needs of the vast majority of Americans," he writes. "If these two parties, however 2008 breaks, can't fix what's broken, this way of life as we've known it may vanish into some deep, dark crevasse."

Check out Cafferty's book at bookstores everywhere.