Books
April 4, 2013 — Scott Johnson
We conclude our preview of the new issue of the Claremont Review of Books this morning with a humdinger. Thanks to our friends at the CRB for the privilege of previewing the issue for Power Line readers. Please think about subscribing here for the ridiculously low price of $19.95 and getting access to the whole shooting match online immediately in addition to home delivery of the hard copy at some
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April 3, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In previewing the new issue of the Claremont Review of Books (subscribe here) yesterday we featured Bill Voegeli’s demolition of Michael Grunwald’s panegyric supporting the godawful stimulus bill of 2009, enacted right around the time that the recession was ending (according to the National Bureau of Economic Research). We continue our preview today with Hillsdale College Professor R.J. Pestritto’s review of Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition, by Bowdoin
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April 2, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Last week I pored over the magnificent new (Winter, just in time for Spring) issue of the Claremont Review of Books. The CRB is the flagship publication of the Claremont Institute and my favorite magazine. I want to persuade you to subscribe to it, which you can do here for the ridiculously low, heavily subsidized (don’t feel guilty!) price of $19.95 a year and get immediate online access thrown in
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March 30, 2013 — Steven Hayward
In this third installment of our conversation with Charles C. Johnson, author of Why Coolidge Matters, we turn our conversation to his current work-in-progress, which is about Barack Obama. This four-and-a-half minute segment discusses the centrality of Obama’s education, which the mainstream media assiduously avoided (like everything else.) As I’ve said before, keep your eye on Johnson. You’re going to hear a lot from him for a very long time.
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March 27, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Herewith the second installment of our conversation with Charles C. Johnson, about his new book Why Coolidge Matters. In this six-minute segment, we talk about Coolidge’s early reputation as a Progressive Republican, and his spiritual outlook that partially grounded his constitutional conservatism.
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March 27, 2013 — Scott Johnson
John Ford is America’s greatest director and “The Searchers” is one of his greatest films. If you’ve ever seen it, you may have asked yourself in wonderment as the credits rolled: “Where did that come from?” Now Glenn Frankel, G.B. Dealey Regents Professor in Journalism and director of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, has answered that question and more in The Searchers: The Making
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March 24, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Charles C. Johnson is one of the brightest young writers in the conservative movement today, and Power Line was fortunate enough to sit down with Charles in Los Angeles last week for an extended conversation about his terrific new book, Why Coolidge Matters: Leadership Lessons from America’s Most Underrated President. We’ll roll out short segments from this long conversation over the course of the next week or two. In the
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March 15, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Edward Jay Epstein is incapable of writing a dull book. He is the author, for example, of several fascinating books on the Kennedy assassination and related intelligence issues. Among these books are Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald and Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA. Also related to the subject are his ebooks Killing Castro and James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? as well
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March 1, 2013 — Steven Hayward
We had the great Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo high on our list for the Power Line 100 Best Professors in America even before many of you wrote to suggest him, and as Allen made a tiny bit of news this week (along with a timely poem—who knew?) his early inclusion became obvious. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce III professor of the Civil War at Gettysburg College who first burst
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February 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
At my number one daughter’s primary school in the 1990′s, study of the Yanamamo bushmen permeated the curriculum. By the time my daughter moved on from the school to seventh grade, I believe she “knew” (I think much of what she was taught isn’t true) more about the Yanamamo than she did about American history. I should have been paying more attention, of course, but I had other battles to
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February 14, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Neal Freeman is a former National Review staffer and editor. In 1965, he was detailed to serve as the press secretary in Bill Buckley’s quixotic campaign for mayor of New York. In my paperback copy of Buckley’s campaign memoir, The Unmaking of a Mayor, there is a photograph of an impossibly young and handsome Freeman looking over the draft of a speech with Buckley. Freeman recently drew on his long
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February 13, 2013 — Steven Hayward
We haven’t taken sufficient notice here of the decision of Pope Benedict XVI to abdicate. Pope Benedict has always labored in the shadow, so to speak, of his charismatic and highly consequential predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who we can rightly claim had a key role in bringing about the demise of the Soviet empire. I write about this a lot in my second Age of Reagan, and I won’t
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February 11, 2013 — John Hinderaker
This afternoon, President Obama presented the Medal of Honor to Staff Sgt. Clint Romesha at the White House. Sgt. Romesha received the medal for his heroism in helping to fight off an attack in 2009 by more than 300 Taliban who threatened to overrun Combat Outpost Keating, in northeastern Afghanistan. For some reason, the Daily Mail web site seems to have the most complete account of the ceremony, and the
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February 10, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Machiavelli in Hell is the title of Sebastian De Grazia’s intellectual biography of the infamous Florentine philosopher that tends toward the current conventional view that Machiavelli was a misunderstood republican, which I think is not only mistaken but which drains much of the life and profundity out of Machiavelli’s complex and ambitious teaching. This was the subject of discussion in my graduate class at Pepperdine University on a recent Tuesday,
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February 7, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In writing the first volume of The Age of Reagan, covering the period 1964-1980, Steve Hayward had an inspired idea. He decided to tell the liberal’s side of the story partly from the perspective of Daniel Patrick Moynihan — “the thinking man’s liberal” — whose career spanned the entire period in view. It is one of many great things about the book. Moynihan’s heroic moment came in his brief representation
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February 7, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Barry Rubin is the learned historian and commentator on the Middle East who serves as director of Israel’s Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. In our Picks we frequently link to his online comments on current events posted online at The Rubin Report as well as PJ Media’s Rubin Report. The GLORIA Center has now posted 13
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February 1, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger built an excellent column on the deep thoughts of Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse was the favorite theorist of the New Left, the man who, as Henninger recalls, developed the theory of “repressive tolerance” that provided the basis for a lot of mischief on campus. The mention of Marcuse’s name brought memories flooding back. When I headed off to college in 1969, Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man
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