Books
May 16, 2013 — Steven Hayward
We take this brief time out from our ongoing Obama scandal coverage for a detour in the intellectual fever swamps of the left, in particular a bizarre article out in the current issue of The Nation by Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind: From Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. Nothing subtle about that title. The Nation article, “Nietzsche’s Marginal Children: On Friedrich Hayek” attempts to discredit Hayek’s free market
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May 12, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Two of my all-time favorite books on historical subjects unraveled the fraught controversies deriving from cases involving Communist spies. In Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, first published in 1978, Allen Weinstein settled the case referred to in the subtitle. Random House published an updated edition in 1997 and the Hoover Institution has just issued a third edition (the one linked above) in honor of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the book’s publication.
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May 7, 2013 — Scott Johnson
When a left-wing academic wins the recognition of the American Political Science Association, it is at best an event full of sound and fury signifying nothing but the left-wing tilt of academia and the left’s domination of the institutions conferring honors and renown. When a conservative of some stripe achieves such recognition, it suggests (to me) that his or her undeniable excellence has overcome the resistance of the judges. Such
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April 29, 2013 — Steven Hayward
It’s an axiom of American cosmopolitanism that Europe is far advanced over the United States in terms of social democracy, tolerance, openness, and so forth, and at the pinnacle of European sophistication stands France. The French have it over us on everything from existential filmmaking, wine and cheese, anti-semitism, and embrace of gay . . . —wait, what’s this? A major populist uprising against gay marriage in France, with hundreds
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April 18, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Naomi Schaefer Riley reviewed The Art of Freedom by the late Earl Shorris in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week. The review and, by the sound of it, the book are not to be missed. As with the controversy over Bowdoin College and our engagement with our alma mater, the subject is our need for true liberal education. Riley writes: Almost two decades ago, Earl Shorris, a novelist and
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April 7, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Edward Jay Epstein’s new book is The Annals of Unsolved Crime, just published by Melville House. Ed is incapable of writing a dull book, and this one lacks a dull page. Michael Wolff’s USA Today review is in the nature of an appreciation that I share in full. Ed now writes to invite Power Line readers to participate in a series of online programs geared to the book: I will
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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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