Books
June 27, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I have been threatening for a few years now to write a book with the title Bureaucracy in America, which would attempt to do for our administrative state what Tocqueville’s Democracy in America did in the 19th century—explain the deeper cultural and philosophical aspects of the practice of American democracy. For it is Tocqueville who offers the preface to a serious reconsideration of our administrative state today, in his famous
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June 26, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Researching the constitutionality of the regime of administrative law, I came across a notice early in 2014 that Philip Hamburger’s Is Administrative Law Unlawful? was forthcoming in hardcover from the University of Chicago Press (it’s now available in paperback). “The audacity of hope” had nothing on the audacity of Hamburger. Indeed, the audacity of Hamburger was a cure for the audacity of hope. The question he posed in the title
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June 25, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Douglas Murray (@DouglasKMurray on Twitter) is associate editor of Britain’s Spectator and a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute. He is a prolific columnist. Gatestone has compiled his columns for the institute here. Murray’s new book is The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. It is a book full of portents and warnings for us. Murray launched his book with a lecture at the Heritage Foundation last week posted
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June 15, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Yesterday on our VIP live webcast, we talked briefly about the sources of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), which I argue predates Trump and would likely be present if any other Republican, even mild-mannered Jeb Bush, were in the White House right now. TDS has its roots in the lazy presumption that liberalism represents “the side of history,” as though “History” is a self-conscious thing with only one direction. This presumption is, in
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June 9, 2017 — Scott Johnson
American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray must rank among our most prominent living social scientists. At a May 17 hearing of the Joint Economic Committee convened by Senator and JEC vice chairman Mike Lee, Murray was included on a panel of social scientists testifying on the state of social capital in America — the subject of a new report released by the committee. Testifying along with Murray on the panel
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June 7, 2017 — Steven Hayward
While we await the threatened—and as yet untitled—memoir of Hillary Clinton, we can delight in a new book also about the inner reaches of Herself, coming in August: Strong for a Moment Like This: The Daily Devotions of Hillary Rodham Clinton. It’s 416 pages! Maybe they are blank pages like that other recent classic, Michael Knowles’s Reasons to Vote for Democrats? No—this is apparently a serious book. Hillary doesn’t joke
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June 6, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Reader Patti Kruse wrote us last year to encourage our remembrance of the D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches. “My dad landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day,” she told us. “He was one of the fortunate ones, as he was never physically injured and managed to survive from D-Day all the way through the Battle of the Bulge and V-E Day. He rarely spoke about his experience except to say
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June 5, 2017 — Scott Johnson
John recently hosted our friend Howard Root at a packed Center of the American Experiment lunch forum in downtown Minneapolis. Howard told the story of his experience as chief executive officer of Vascular Solutions caught in the crosshairs of the federal government when prosecutors sought to put him in the big house and his company out of business. It was the most powerful 45-minute presentation I have ever seen. Howard
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May 11, 2017 — Scott Johnson
This morning we conclude our preview of the new (Soring) issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Thanks to our friends at the Claremont Institute, I have read the new issue in galley to select three pieces to be submitted for the consideration of Power Line readers. As always, wanting to do right by the magazine and by our readers, I had a hard time choosing. You, however, can do
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May 10, 2017 — Scott Johnson
This morning we continue our preview of the new issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Thanks to our friends at the Claremont Institute, I read the new issue in galley to select three pieces to be submitted for the consideration of Power Line readers. As always, wanting to do right by the magazine and by our readers, I had a hard time choosing. You, however, can do your own
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April 17, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In a nearby post John notes our coming VIP Live event via Google Hangout this coming Wednesday evening with Norman Podhoretz. We invited Mr. Podhoretz to join us to celebrate the republication of >Making It by New York Review Books in what is essentially a fiftieth anniversary edition as a NYRB Classic last week. Our get-together is scheduled to take place on Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. (Eastern), 7:00 p.m. (Central).
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April 15, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s long-time confidante, is looking for a book deal. Reportedly, her asking price is $2 million. Jazz Shaw doubts that there’s a sufficient market for Abedin’s story to support this price. He may be right. However, Abedin strikes me as by far the most interesting person in Hillary Clinton’s world, with the obvious exception of Bill. First, there is her family background and ethnicity. Her parents are
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April 11, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Many conservatives who follow politics came to know Norman Podhoretz through his work as the editor of Commentary and his own essays, most of which were published in Commentary itself. He moved notably from the left to the right, shed friends and influenced many people like me along the way. He could write the book on How To Lose Friends and Influence People, and more or less has under other
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March 21, 2017 — Scott Johnson
My escape into the lost worlds of Norman Podhoretz’s Making It has a comic coda. I make something of the fact that Making It was mugged by the New York Review of Books upon its publication in 1967, but that it is now published as a NYRB Classic “under the auspices of the New York Review of Books, no less[.]” NYRB Classics editor Edwin Frank takes issue with me in
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March 21, 2017 — Scott Johnson
This past Friday the New York Times published a long profile of former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz. I wrote the following review/essay about Norman Podhoretz and his 1967 autobiographical book Making It for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, which posted it on Sunday. On Monday New York Review of Books founding editor (with Barbara Epstein, then wife of Podhoretz’s friend Jason Epstein) Robert Silvers died in Manhattan; Silvers is the
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March 20, 2017 — Steven Hayward
News out of the sports world is that no NFL teams want to sign free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick, not merely because he may be washed up, but because of his political stunts. An unnamed NFL insider told Bleacher Report: “[Many teams] genuinely hate him and can’t stand what he did (kneeling for the national anthem). They want nothing to do with him. They won’t move on. They think showing
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March 19, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal has posted my column on the restoration to print of Norman Podhoretz’s Making It by New York Review Books. With a nod to Kander and Ebb, I called it “If Making It can make it there.” By “there,” I mean the publisher of the new edition of Making It, which trashed it upon the original publication of the book 50 years ago. Now it rightly
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