Anatomy of a Presidency
Mr. Todd dissects "the promise versus the reality of Obama" and concludes that he will be regarded, at least in the near future, as "a president whose potential wasn't...
National Security Adrift
Bush’s administration was known for blundering into rash decisions. Obama’s will be remembered for agonising over tweets and press releases.
A New Conservative Cool
You just know that you are in for a treat when a book on the subject of virtue starts with P.J. O’Rourke and ends with Chris Buckley. In between them, you’ll...
Revolution for Morons
Most of us have the benefit of growing up politically in private. Not too many people remember the naive and silly views we held; the late night college bull sessions...
Testing and Authoritarianism
Zhao tells us that China has the best education system because it can produce the highest test scores. But, he says, it has the worst education system in the world...
Marriage, Change, and the Future of Constitutional Self Government
Marriage and family life are not what they once were and this “change” should continue with the embrace of further reforms in the direction of ...
Commerce, Culture, and Liberty
This collection of thirty-seven readings (from thirty-three writers) brings together some of the most significant pre–Adam Smith writings on the political and...
Uncovering the Meaning of Covering Meanings
The most important book published in political philosophy in years is Arthur M. Melzer’s Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing. It...
Israel Kirzner on Austrian Economics
Israel Kirzner, Professor Emeritus at NYU, is among the foremost scholars in the continuing development of the Austrian school of economic theory. He has extended our...
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A Force for Intellectual Good
More than any benefit we have had in the same period from Al Gore’s Internet, C-SPAN’s founder Brian Lamb has been a more important force for intellectual...
Spirituality Without Religion
The waning of organised religion is leaving a gap. Non-believers are finding that they have rejected not just faith’s stuffy dogmas, but also rituals that helped us to...
The Americanization of Everywhere
Everyone can recall their first encounter with America, whether it was watching 'Gone With the Wind' or 'Dumbo,' the death of John F. Kennedy, the resignation of Richard...
To Be a Grunt
When the longest war in U.S. history is finished (or at least U.S. involvement in it), "One Million Steps" may well stand as a classic account of what it was like to be...
A Forgotten Evil
British historian Roger Moorhouse found that almost no one he spoke to even knew about the Nazi-Soviet Pact, perhaps because it has been glossed over in too many...
Ebola Facts Are Scary Enough
This book, like most writing about Ebola, is deeply unsettling, but it’s also sober minded, and in this respect, a standout in the floodlet of Ebola books, many of...
How the Media Protects Obama
Now that she’s no longer on the CBS payroll, this pit bull is off the leash and tearing flesh off the behinds of senior media and government officials. In her...
Boris on Winston
The element of self-identification in Johnson’s project is too obvious to ignore. Here is a maverick Tory politician, endowed in equal measure with fierce...
How Do We Get Good Government?
The historian Arnold Toynbee once remarked that the past is "a chaos unamenable to...laws." Fukuyama has, thankfully, ignored that adage. While his modesty prevents him...
Schocking Indictment on Afghanistan
Afghanistan is not an easy place for in-depth reporting. Foreign civilians have been targets, even in the safer areas, since 2001, when the first Spanish journalists...
Updating a Chronicle of Suffering
When the Ebola outbreak in West Africa began to escalate a few months ago, the writer Richard Preston was working on a children’s fantasy novel. He dropped that...
The Last Founding Father
Unlike those mega-biographies that bury their subject’s chief accomplishments under 900 pages of undigested detail, Richard Brookhiser’s compact, profound,...
Renaissance Man or Charlatan?
The book is ostensibly a call for revolution, even if it doesn’t offer much in the way of concrete political actions Brand would endorse or execute himself....
Biting the Invisible Hand
If you go to a bookstore, you’ll find an abundance of books deploring the very nature of capitalism. Hence, it’s a pleasure to find one author who will buck...