Books
January 5, 2024 — Scott Johnson
John recently highlighted the favorite books he somehow found time to read in 2023. I want to highlight my own favorite new book published in 2023. Writing about Edward Jay Epstein in the adjacent post reminded me that I flagged it last year on Power Line at the time of publication. Lapham’s Quarterly excerpted the third chapter of the book and published it as “Waiting for Brando.” Ed titles the
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January 2, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Was 2023 a banner year for books? Not exactly. It was partly a walk on the dark side. In 2022, I started reading John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books. I read the rest of them–there are 21 altogether–in 2023. As I wrote last year, McGee is a guilty pleasure. Who wouldn’t like to live on a Florida houseboat and fend off beautiful women, while doing battle with evildoers? MacDonald was
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December 31, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I have adapted the heading of this post from the great Thomas Sowell’s occasional columns expressing “random thoughts on the passing scene.” It is unbelievable how many apothegms he formulated and shibboleths he pierced in those occasional columns. In no way can I rise to Sowell’s standards. I only claim to have a few random thoughts. Random I can do. Sowell compiled numerous random thoughts from his columns in Part
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December 29, 2023 — Scott Johnson
John Mearsheimer is R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He fancies himself an international relations scholar who belongs to the realist school of thought. With Harvard’s Stephen Walt, he is the author of The Israel-Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a book to which I devoted a lot of attention on Power Line when it was published in 2007. Mearsheimer has regained a
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December 29, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In his post on Bill Barr, Lloyd Billingsley draws on One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General to mount a critique of Barr’s service as AG in two administrations, the second time at the behest of President Trump. Along with former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, I thought Barr was one of Trump’s most impressive appointees. If Trump were to be reelected in 2024,
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December 25, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
Harvard president Claudine Gay is being pressured to step down over charges of plagiarism as former president Obama lobbies the administration to stick with her. That makes sense because Obama is a Harvard law alum, like Gay soft on campus anti-Semitism, and no stranger to plagiarism his own self. In Dreams from My Father, released in 1995, the author visits Kenya and the account bears remarkable similarities to I Dreamed of Africa, published in
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December 22, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
In the course of writing Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon encountered Mohammed, who pursued the Jews with “implacable hatred” to the end of his life. The historian also called out Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogoth king who invaded Italy in 488 AD and “condescended to disarm the unwarlike natives of Italy, interdicting all weapons of offence, and excepting only a small knife for domestic use.” Call
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December 22, 2023 — Scott Johnson
A friend asked me to recommend a book about Whittaker Chambers as a Christmas gift for her smartly conservative daughter several years ago. Chambers stands at the center of an incredible drama and several fantastic books about him. There is still much to be learned from him and his case. Here I revisit and expand the list with a little help from the eminent historian Harvey Klehr: 1. Witness is
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December 21, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Robert S. Wistrich was the Neuburger Professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the director of the university’s Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism. He may also have been the leading academic authority on anti-Semitism. Witness his histories A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad (2010) and From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, The Jews and Israel (2012).
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December 18, 2023 — Scott Johnson
When Peter Collier died in 2019, Lloyd Billingsley paid tribute to him with this remembrance. I added these personal recollections of his impact on me. I first met Peter in 1989 or 1990 when he came to the Twin Cities with David Horowitz to promote Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the ’60s. Having just finished reading the book the day before, I went to see Peter and David at Macalester
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December 18, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
RFK Jr. is in the running for president of the United States, the office his father RFK might have won if he had not been assassinated on June 6, 1968. RFK Jr.’s uncle JFK did gain election to the White House before he was shot dead on November 22, 1963. That launched a murder mystery that continues to this day. Readers can get a fresh perspective from Peter Collier, co-author
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December 15, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Writing about Edward Gibbon’s view of “Mahomet” and “Mahometans” reminded me of Montaigne. I thought it might be worthwhile to repeat my comments on Montaigne and his use of irony in his discussion of Islam. Please forgive the repetition or, if you remember what I had to say: Reader, pass by! The cultural left exerts a tyrannical force policing our speech. To take just one current exposition of the phenomenon,
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December 12, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I am grateful to Lloyd Billingsley for his account of Edward Gibbon’s encounter with Muhammad in the pages of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire via Robert Spencer’s The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS. This is nothing more than a long footnote to Lloyd’s post for readers who might be unfamiliar with the text of Gibbon’s monument to posterity or interested in a
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December 11, 2023 — Scott Johnson
It’s that time of the year when respectable publications offer recommended reading for the coming year. You too can make a new year’s resolution to fill the gaps in your education. One such source is the Wall Street Journal Review’s annual compilation of “Who Read What” (better this year than last). In its World (or American) edition The Spectator’s December issue performs a comparable service in “The Spectator’s 2023 Books
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December 9, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
In his massive Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon was bound to encounter the Muslims and their prophet. Published in 1776, the great historian’s work proves relevant for current events in the Middle East. The sword, says Muhammad, is the key of heaven and hell. A drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months
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November 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has died at 100. The New York Times obituary by David Sanger is posted here. Sanger’s obituary links to the statement announcing Kissinger’s death by his consulting firm. What a monumental American life he led. Ah, yes, the Times. In 2011 the Times Book Review featured Kissinger’s laudatory review of the new biography of Bismarck by Penn’s Jonathan Steinberg on page one. On my
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November 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I was surprised to read what I thought was an exceedingly fair and illuminating review of two new books on Friedrich Hayek in the current (December 7) issue of the New York Review of Books. The review is by the financial historian Edward Chancellor. In “The Naturalist” he takes up Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950, by Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger, and Liberalism’s Last Man: Hayek in the Age of Political
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