Books
May 14, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Mark Halperin has the new podcast Next Up on Megyn Kelly’s new podcast/video network. In the clip below, Halperin analyzes the video compiled by the publisher of Tapper’s new book (written with Axios reporter Alex Thompson) on the “cover-up” of President Biden’s cognitive decline by the Biden administration. Penguin Press is the publisher of the Tapper/Thompson book and knows that Tapper may not be the perfect messenger to “cover” the
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May 11, 2025 — Scott Johnson
John Floberg was my college classmate, my neurologist until he retired, and remains my long-time friend. John earned his way through college on a Navy ROTC scholarship and served as a Navy officer following our graduation. He returned to school following his Navy service and graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School. Now retired and living in Ely, Minnesota, John lets me know whenever he returns to the Twin
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May 8, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Douglas Murray’s On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization was published by Broadside Books on April 8; we noted it here. With the kind permission of the rights holders we present this timely excerpt on Iran. Murray writes: Today the government most responsible for spreading the accusation that Israel is expansionist and colonialist is the revolutionary Islamic government in Iran, which has spent recent years assiduously
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May 5, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Since David Horowitz died last week at the age of 86, I have pulled from our archives a few of the columns David sent us to publish on Power Line. David Horowitz’s Black Book of the American Left was published by Encounter Books in 2013. The book covers a lot of ground from the time David left the radical left behind. Among my favorite pieces are those in which he
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May 2, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Our friend David Horowitz died this past Tuesday at the age of 86. Drawing on our archives, I am posting a few columns David sent us for publication on Power Line. In 2013 Encounter Books initiated the publication of his collected conservative writings under the title The Black Book of the American Left. The full collection comes to ten volumes. Explaining this project, David wrote the column “Who are our
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April 30, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I join John in noting the death of our friend David Horowitz at the age of 86. I knew and admired David for more than 35 years, from the time he first came through town with Peter Collier to talk about the invaluable Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties. I counted David a friend for roughly the same length of time. He was a friend with deep insight about
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April 25, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Peter Collier died in 2019 at the age of 80. I first met Peter in 1989 or 1990 when he came to the Twin Cities with David Horowitz to promote Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the ’60s. Having just finished reading the book the day before, I went to see Peter and David at Macalester College in St. Paul. I told Peter I thought the first chapter (“Requiem for A
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April 17, 2025 — Scott Johnson
As a high school and college student I attended some memorable readings of work by writers whose work I admired. I am thinking, for example, of the late John Berryman, whom I saw read from his Dream Songs at the University of Minnesota when I was in my senior year of high school. Berryman was a member of the university’s English faculty. His 77 Dream Songs had won the 1965
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April 16, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Cornelia Kaercher was the librarian at St. Paul Academy through my junior year. Miss Kaercher, as we knew her, stocked paperback books for sale to students in addition to tending to the school’s collection of books. Thanks to Miss Kaercher, I bought and read The Catcher In the Rye in seventh grade, long before it had made its way into high school curricula, and Dandelion Wine, the book that gave
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April 13, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Professor Andrew Busch reviews John Ganz’s When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s in the current issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Professor Busch’s review is published as “The Outsiders” (behind the CRB paywall). Although the book is not one that I will ever read, Professor Busch’s conclusion is worth reading all by itself: Driving Ganz’s analysis is a particular
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April 3, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Kenneth Rogoff is Maurits C. Boas Professor at Harvard University and former chief economist at the IMF. His influential 2009 book with Carmen Reinhart, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, shows the remarkable quantitative similarities across time and countries in the roots and aftermath of debt and financial crises. Professor Rogoff is also known for his pioneering work on central bank independence and on exchange rates. He
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March 23, 2025 — Scott Johnson
James Freeman’s online Wall Street Journal column strikes a note of incredulity: “Joe Biden’s writing another book?” Freeman is triggered by the NBC News story reporting that that Biden is writing a memoir. Freeman quotes the story: “As Biden develops a theme for his memoir, he has been consulting former senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and senior White House advisers Mike
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March 16, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Last month I wrote briefly about Senator Tom Cotton’s book Seven Things You Can’t Say About China on its official date of publication in “Seven Things You Can Say About Tom Cotton.” Now Professor David Garrow, author of Rising Star and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Bearing the Cross, reviews the book for the Washington Free Beacon in “Red flag warning.” Professor Garrow writes: Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton, now chairman of
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March 15, 2025 — Scott Johnson
I ask readers to forgive me for repeating this personal note on the Ides of March. It is meant to pay tribute to my high school alma mater, my high school teachers — Latin teachers Lyman Hawbaker (who also taught ancient history) and Dave Sims in particular — and to my classmates. In the course of our high school years we were required to study Latin and dip our toes
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March 9, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Daylight saving time is mistakenly credited to Benjamin Franklin. It may still be a good idea even if it wasn’t inspired by Franklin. Nevertheless, I find the commencement of daylight saving time today annoying. As a morning person, I am not the least bit pleased by the extension of dawn by an hour so early in the year. By the same token, do we really need to move sunset back
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February 18, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Today is the official publication date of Seven Things You Can’t Say About China, by Senator Tom Cotton. Senator Cotton is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He became its chairman in the new Congress. As I like to say of authorities when the assertion applies: he knows what he is talking about. John Hinderaker previewed the book here last week. I want to add these seven things you
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February 17, 2025 — Scott Johnson
TCM first broadcast the 1950 film noir Woman On the Run in April 2019 with this introduction by Noir Alley host Eddie Muller. I only caught up with the film on January 24 this year when it was rebroadcast with a terrific introduction by Muller and guest Ernest Dickerson. The two of them hit all the points I would want to make about the merits of the movie with a
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