Books
December 22, 2012 — Scott Johnson
In Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent, the president’s left-wing nominee for Secretary of State has a secret. As a young man — echoes of the Hiss case — he was a member of a Communist cell. Leffingwell’s Communist past is a secret that must be covered up. Complications ensue, giving life to a Washington novel that is one of our favorites. Novelist Thomas Mallon renders his considered literary judgment in
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December 19, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Salman Rushdie has just published a memoir — Joseph Anton — of his life under the fatwa promulgated against him by Ayatollah Khomeni on account of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. I have taken my bearings on this saga from Daniel Pipes’s prescient treatment of it in The Rushdie Affair, originally published in 1990. In his rewarding New Republic review/essay, Paul Berman cites Kenin Malik’s From Fatwa to Jihad, which
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December 17, 2012 — Steven Hayward
If so, the Claremont Review of Books has got the answer for you! Just out today is the CRB’s “Claremont Christmas Reading” roundup of book suggestions from an all-star lineup including Harvey Mansfield, Larry Arnn, Hadley Arkes, Christopher Caldwell, Matthew Continetti, Wilfred McClay, and John Yoo, among others. (Others including. . . moi.) There’s one consensus pick among the assembled luminaries: it’s something about Obama and “change.” But Jean Yarbrough’s
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December 7, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Here we conclude our Christmas extravaganza previewing the Fall issue of the Claremont Review of Books. From Aristotle to affirmative action and the painful election of 2012, we have covered a lot of ground with a few highlights from a characteristically excellent and indispensable issue. Among its other highlights are our own Steve Hayward’s review of CRB editor Charles Kesler’s I Am The Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of
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December 6, 2012 — John Hinderaker
In Episode 38, Brian Ward and I talk about cliffs, fiscal and real–Brian likened us to Thelma and Louise–and awarded our This Week In Gatekeeping prize. But most of the show was devoted to an interview with Jake Tapper, ABC News White House Correspondent and the author of The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor. I wrote about The Outpost here, when I was only half-way through it. Having
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December 6, 2012 — Scott Johnson
We continue our Christmas extravaganza previewing the Fall issue of the Claremont Review of Books through Friday. If you lean conservative and love to read about history, politics, economics, literature, culture and current events, the CRB has earned your attention. Subscriptions are available here for $19.95 (including immediate online access). Students of Winston Churchill know that Aristotle played a key role in his self-education. Churchill’s search for “a concise compendious
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December 5, 2012 — Scott Johnson
We continue our Christmas extravaganza previewing the Fall issue of the Claremont Review of Books through Friday. If you lean conservative and love to read about history, politics, economics, literature, culture and current events, the CRB may be the magazine for you. It is for me. Subscriptions are available here for $19.95 (including immediate online access). The Fall issue is incredibly rich. As is typically the case, reading the issue
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December 4, 2012 — Scott Johnson
We continue our Christmas extravaganza previewing the Fall issue of the Claremont Review of Books (subscribe here and get immediate access to the issue online). To assess an extraordinary new book on affirmative action in higher education, the editors have called on the great Thomas Sowell. Sowell introduces the subject with a paragraph that could be chiseled in stone: Anyone who follows public policy issues can easily think of policies
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November 30, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Today (Churchill’s birthday, by no coincidence) our long-time friends at the Claremont Institute are launching a new video project entitled “The American Mind,” hosted by Charles R. Kesler, editor of the Institute’s indispensible journal, the Claremont Review of Books. The Institute kindly gave Power Line a preview and first crack at announcing its launch. Is this just another think tank video venture? On the surface, it appears the answer would
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November 29, 2012 — Steven Hayward
I’m working up toward a Christmas book gift list for the Claremont Review in a few more days, and the process has made me press ahead further into Jean Yarbrough’s indispensable new book, mentioned here previously, Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition. There are lots of TR books out there—some of them even pretty good, though most are not that good on the question of exploring and untangling his
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November 25, 2012 — Steven Hayward
The current issue of The New Republic has a long attack on Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and free market economics generally by the Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow, entitled “Hayek, Friedman, and the Illusions of Conservative Economics.” Ostensibly a review of the brand new book The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Great Depression by Angus Burgin, the review is less about the book than it is an excuse
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November 22, 2012 — John Hinderaker
I’m only half way through it, but with our readers starting to think about Christmas shopping, I want to join the chorus of praise for Jake Tapper and his new book about the war in Afghanistan, The Outpost. Tapper is well-known as one of the few real journalists in the Washington press corps, but The Outpost is an achievement of a whole different order of magnitude. It tells the story
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November 20, 2012 — Scott Johnson
I think that just about everything President Obama “knows” about American history comes from left-wing academics like American University professor Peter Kuznick, the co-author with Oliver Stone of The Untold History of the United States. The book is a companion to Stone’s Showtime series. At American University, incidentally, Kuznick teaches the “path-breaking course Oliver Stone’s America.” On Showtime, Stone presents Peter Kuznick’s America. They have got a circle of love
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November 16, 2012 — Steven Hayward
I’m always behind on my reading pile, so I was slow to catch up with the Wall Street Journal’s bizarro review last Saturday of the new Manchester-Reid Churchill biography, The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm. Most of the “review” was more a memoir of the reviewer’s casual acquaintanceship with Manchester rather than a discussion of the book. The subtext of the review, most people I’ve spoken with agree, seems to
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November 9, 2012 — Steven Hayward
So it’s back to the books. One of the black holes of the Cold War, and closely related to the impulse to “move on” after its end rather than reckon with the whole truth, is appraising the full extent of Soviet efforts to infiltrate and influence American government. My old mentor M. Stanton Evans, along with co-author Herbert Rommerstein, are out with a new book entitled Stalin’s Secret Agents: The
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November 5, 2012 — Steven Hayward
While we await game day tomorrow, let me refresh everyone’s memory about book news. Back in May I brought Power Line readers’ attention to the forthcoming final volume of William Manchester’s multi-volume Churchill biography, The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965. The official pub date is tomorrow, but Amazon is shipping it already and you can have your copy tomorrow if you want to distract from election day rumors
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November 4, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Tom Brown is the father-in-law of Dartmouth alum and ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper. I admire Jake’s work; he seems to me to be a straight shooter. He’s not toeing anybody’s line. Mr. Brown draws attention to Tapper’s new book, The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, to be published on November 13. He writes: Jake details life for our soldiers as they build, man, support and
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