Books
October 1, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In the September 20 Review section of the Wall Street Journal, Dominic Green took up a new book on anti-Semitism in “A poisonous history.” Mr. Green is the author of the pseudonymous Spectator column (attributed to “Cockburn”) reviewing the evidence of Ilhan Omar’s marriage to her brother. I know Mr. Green wrote it because he called me while he was working on it to ask me a few questions. It
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September 17, 2025 — Scott Johnson
My friend Wilfred McClay holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. He has now co-edited (with Rabbi Stuart Halpern of Yeshiva University) Jewish Roots of American Liberty, to be published next week by Encounter Books. I learned of the book from an advertisement in the new issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Having written Bill to ask about the book yesterday
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September 8, 2025 — Scott Johnson
With the publication of Sam Tanenhaus’s long-awaited and disappointing doorstop bio of William F. Buckley, Jr., this is the season of Buckley. Not so much because of the bio itself as because of the reflections on the book by such friends and colleagues of Buckley as Charles Kesler, Neal Freeman, James Piereson, and Daniel Oliver. By contrast, in its September 25 issue, the New York Review of Books has now
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September 4, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In June 1945, at the opening of the general election campaign, Winston Churchill gave a speech that was broadcast over the BBC. Having recently read Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, Churchill observed: My friends, I must tell you that a Socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Although it is now put forward in the main by people who have a good grounding in the Liberalism and Radicalism
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September 3, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Peter Wood is president of the invaluable National Association of Scholars, a former professor of anthropology and college provost, and the author of compelling books including 1620, Wrath, A Bee in the Mouth, and (my favorite) Diversity: The Invention of a Concept. He writes with lucidity and grace on questions of history and public policy both in his books and his articles, as in the current Spectator World essay “The
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September 1, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I wrote about the Eighth Circuit opinion in Schmitt v. Rebertus. Reading the opinion reminded me that I had written a Weekly Standard column about Charles Colson’s work with prisoners in the second half of his life. The Washington Post defamed Colson in a book review by Professor David Greenberg published in 2005. I think Colson’s organization appealed to Hugh Hewitt for help and Hugh referred them to me.
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August 27, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In the paywalled Free Press column “The Longest Journey in the World,” Norman Podhoretz looks back at age 95 to recount the ups and downs of his life and career. Toward the end of the column, he recalls: Having long been a man on the left, I gradually moved toward political conservatism. I found new intellectual circles and published more than a dozen books. Thirty-seven years after the release of
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August 19, 2025 — Scott Johnson
This past June we published three posts by Chris Flannery on Mark Twain. These posts were the surplus of Chris’s Claremont Review of Books review “Pure gold and his American Mind column “To absquatulate.” The review, the column, and the posts were all triggered by Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain. Chris now returns with the American Mind column “The Vindication of Booker T. Washington,” in the course of
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August 18, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In the August 14 Wall Street Journal column “Evidence Backs Trump on Higher Ed’s Bias,” Professors Jon Shields and Yuval Avnur report the results of their study of bias in college teaching. Exhibit A is the prominent use of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010) in college courses. According to Shields and Avnur, “it shows up in thousands of syllabi, as it
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August 15, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Ilhan Omar is the alleged co-author of the memoir This Is What America Looks Like, published by HarperCollins in 2020. The memoir was written “with Rebecca Paley,” in a style and tone that bear absolutely no resemblance to the voice of Ilhan Omar. The memoir covers the 2016 controversy that we pushed into the mainstream press about her marriage to her brother in a few cursory pages. If you seek
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August 8, 2025 — Scott Johnson
This is my final note on Free France’s Lion, General Philippe Leclerc, at least for the time being. As I have observed in these notes, Leclerc was a man of sterling character. It shines forth from the pages of William Mortimer Moore’s biography. General Leclerc’s leadership of France’s Second Armored Division essentially came to an end in Munich and Berchtesgaden in April and May 1945. At Leclerc’s request the division
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August 7, 2025 — Scott Johnson
It was 80 years ago yesterday that we dropped the big one on Hiroshima. I pulled down my copy of Richard B. Frank’s Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire in honor of the day. What an excellent book. Given current events, this photo caption struck me: “Perhaps the most ominous feature of Okinawa was the integration of the civilian population into the defense: this led to the deaths
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August 6, 2025 — Scott Johnson
on the way to the Bulge. But before I get there, I want to return briefly to the subject of General Philippe Leclerc. Studying up on Free France’s Lion, as I wrote in the linked post, I was most struck by his sterling character. His bravery was one component of it, but his character as a whole shines forth most vividly from William Mortimer Moore’s biography of Leclerc. Leclerc was
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August 5, 2025 — Scott Johnson
One searches for the words to characterize the current leaders of the United Kingdom, France, and Canada who have voiced support for a Palestinian state to award the genocidal maniacs responsible for Israel’s ordeal since 10/7. After struggling to articulate my own thoughts yesterday, it occurred to me… Speaking in Parliament in January 1931 Winston Churchill brutally disparaged the Labour Prime Minister as “a boneless wonder.” From chapter 3 (“Churchillisms”)
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August 3, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Rob Woutat died in January 2019 at the age of 80. I was a student of Rob’s over a period of five years at St Paul Academy in St Paul, from the first year he taught English at the school. In addition to English classes with him I was in six plays he directed over my last three years in high school. Rob wrote me a college recommendation that I
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July 26, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I mentioned the Fugs’ Tuli Kupferberg as the co-author of 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft (1967), a genuine relic of the era. Which reminds me… Visiting New York with my father in 1967 or so, I persuaded him to take me to see the Fugs in one of their now legendary nightly performances at Greenwich Village’s Players Theater. It was a memorable show with something close to the
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July 25, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In her column today Ammo Grrrll cites Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book with some disdain, though her disdain may be directed more at the man than the book. Steal This Book remains in print and is indeed available (at the link) in a 50th anniversary edition from a publisher under the umbrella of Hachette Book Group. I actually bought and read the book in its original Grove paperback edition in
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