Post-Mortem Number Four
The New York Sun reports on our Book of the Year event Monday evening here. To buy Norman Podhoretz's Book of the Year, World War VI, go here. World War IV is short, accessible, and the most cogent account so far of our conflict with Islamic radicalism and what must be done to win it.
UPDATE: Pajamas Media's Michael Weiss reports on the Podhoretz event:
Future historians who try pinpoint a date on which the influence of cyberspace reached its peak would do worse than to settle on Monday night. The popular conservative blog Power Line hosted its first annual book award ceremony, honoring Norman Podhoretz for his volume World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, in a swank little corner of the Four Seasons Restaurant.Dinner was served, and so was the following guest list of plenipotentiaries: Podhoretz himself, his wife Midge Decter, his son John (the new editor of Commentary), Henry Kissinger, Paul Wolfowitz, Shaha Riza, Mark Steyn, Andrew Breitbart, and PJM’s own Claudia Rossett.
In his opening remarks, Power Line co-founder John Hinderaker called Podhoretz’s book “not just compelling, but irrefutable.” Well, there would be no mincing of words when the cash prize was the highest in American letters, $25,000. It was donated to Patti Patton-Bader’s charity, Soldiers’ Angels, which provides care packages for U.S. soldiers in the field.
The evening was not characterized by as much mutual appreciation as one might expect at a neo-confab.
There's lots more. As Michael notes, the evening was characterized by vigorous discussion from multiple points of view. Still, I think the degree of consensus behind the main tenets of World War IV was striking, given the diversity among those who spoke.
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