Books
June 13, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I just finished reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America for the first time. I read it over the past two years or so in weekly lunch meetings with my friend Bruce Sanborn. Carleton College’s Professor Larry Cooper, also a friend, served as our preceptor. We used the terrific edition translated, edited, and introduced by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop that is published by the University of Chicago Press. Like
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June 7, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I subscribe to Jewish Insider’s emailed Daily Kickoff roundup. Most of the time it strikes me as an arm of the Democrats’ press relations team. Occasionally, however, I find an item of interest. One such is Matthew Kassel’s interview with Barack Obama posted this morning in connection with the publication of Obama’s memoir A Promised Land. Saying I found the interview of interest is a slight overstatement. Jewish Insider is
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June 1, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
I want to second Steve’s praise for A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education, the fine new essay collection edited by Gail Heriot and Maimon Schwarzschild. The contributors include the two editors, Heather Mac Donald, Peter Kirsanow, and Peter Wood. Gail’s chapter on the impacts of race preferences on their intended direct beneficiaries is must reading, in my opinion. Wouldn’t it be great if the chapter were read
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May 31, 2021 — Scott Johnson
In observance of Memorial Day 2007 the Wall Street Journal published a brilliant column by the late Peter Collier to mark the occasion. The column remains timely and is accessible online here. I don’t think we’ll read or hear anything more thoughtful or appropriate to the occasion today. With the kind permission of Peter himself, here it is: Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those
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May 30, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Jason Riley has just published Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell. Riley is senior fellow of both the Manhattan Institute and the Hoover Institution as well as a weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday the Journal ran an excerpt of the biography under the headline “The soul of black conservatism.” Hoover’s recent profile of Sowell provides a handy overview of his life and work. It also reminds me
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May 28, 2021 — Steven Hayward
While we await word as to whether the Supreme Court will take up appeal of the case of Harvard’s blatant discrimination against Asians, we note the publication this week of A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education, a fine essay collection edited by Gail Heriot and Maimon Schwarzchild of the University of San Diego, and published by our friends at Encounter Books. The title of the book—”a dubious
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May 26, 2021 — Scott Johnson
We continue our preview of the new (Spring) issue of the Claremont Review of Books with Andrew Roberts’s review of a clutch of new books on, or bearing on, Winston Churchill. Roberts’s review is titled “Winston is back!” Subhead: “Churchill was filled to the brim with a love of life.” The heading of Roberts’s review is the message signalled to the fleet upon Churchill’s return to the Admiralty in 1939.
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May 25, 2021 — Scott Johnson
We continue our preview of the new (Spring) issue of the Claremont Review Books with Mary Eberstadt’s review/essay “Girls will be boys.” Subhead: “The trans-kid craze must be stopped.” The left’s war on nature has manifested and taken root in the transgender movement with astonishing speed and success. Eberstadt takes up the new books by Abigail Shrier and Debra Soh that challenge it in its trans kids aspect (“specifically, minor
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May 22, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Meeting Medal of Honor recipient Leo Thorsness was perhaps the most awesome experience I owe to writing for Power Line. I had the great good fortune of meeting Colonel Thorsness in the summer of 2008 through the offices of McCain campaign midwest spokesman Tom Steward (now with John’s crew at Center of the American Experiment). As events unfolded, I ended up writing the introduction to the paperback edition of Leo’s
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May 18, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Crown Publishing Group is a subsidiary of Penguin Random House. Needless to say, it has deep pockets. Those of us who have wondered about the price of New York Governor Cuomo’s disastrous “leadership” in the Covid epidemic now have the answer. Crown is paying Cuomo $5.12 million spread over two tax years for the rights to Cuomo’s ludicrous American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic. Think of the
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May 12, 2021 — John Hinderaker
That is what Mollie Hemingway’s forthcoming Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections promises to be. The Federalist has a lengthy description of the book by Mollie herself. You should read it all. Here are some quotes: If questioning the results of a presidential election were a crime, as many have asserted in the wake of the controversial 2020 election and its aftermath, nearly the
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May 7, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I was unfamiliar with Noa Tishby before reading Robert Sarner’s Times of Israel profile “Israeli actress Noa Tishby’s ‘Simple Guide’ to Israel shakes up US progressives.” Tishby is an Israeli native and left/liberal Zionist who has undertaken the defense of Israel from her perch as a Hollywood actress and producer. The Times of Israel headline refers to her new book Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on
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May 6, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday the National Association of Scholars inaugurated a new series on the Great American Novel with a program on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. The program is accessible here at the NAS YouTube channel. Moderator David Randall kindly led off the questions with one I had submitted in advance because I had a conflict with the live presentation on Zoom. Check out the NAS site here. You can subscribe to the
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April 24, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Sean Wilentz is a historian of the leftist persuasion and also a principled opponent of the New York Times’s 1619 Project errors, distortions, and lies (my word, not his), now adopted as the orthodoxy of the Democratic Party. The problem is “A matter of facts,” he wrote in The Atlantic. He also signed off on the letter prominent historians sent to the Times challenging the project as ideological rather than
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April 23, 2021 — Steven Hayward
We’re posting our weekly episode—which turns out to be Power Line’s 250th podcast!—a day early, as we had a special guest which dictated a slight twist on the usual format: Lucretia and I put aside our Glen Livet in favor of talking with Glenn Ellmers. Glenn is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, research fellow at Hillsdale College, author of a forthcoming biography of Harry Jaffa entitled The Soul
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April 22, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The relationship between the former slave Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln provides deep insight into both men. Douglass’s recollection of his first meeting with Lincoln — “I shall never forget my first interview with this great man” — is a highlight of the 1892 version of Douglass’s autobiography (The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass). In the Claremont Review of Books celebration of the bicentennial anniversary of Lincoln’s birth
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April 21, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Biden administration and Democrats all over the country now promulgate the charge that “systemic racism” permeates our country and that this racism is woven into our founding documents. Earlier this week, for example, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter quoted from the Supreme Court’s ignominious Dred Scott case to make the point. Democrats have essentially taken up the mantle of Chief Justice Taney in Dred Scott. They approve of Taney’s
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