October 26, 2011
The Savage Self-Criticism of Alfred Kazin’s Journals
by Adam Kirsch
Alfred Kazin’s Journals Selected and edited by Richard M. Cook (Yale University Press, 598 pp., $45) ...
The New Republic | November 7, 1914
November 06, 2011
Irresistible
Steve McQueen: A Biography
AS MARC ELIOT reminds us, Steve McQueen was just eight weeks older than Clint Eastwood. He might be alive still, as prominent, laconic, and anti-heroic a screen figure as Clint, and maybe even a notable producer and director. Eastwood has won just about every prize there is, and he has made the journey that probably appealed to him the most—from a working-class kid to a movie cowboy to one of the most esteemed figures and authentic stars remaining in American show business. Eastwood is an >>> Full Review
November 02, 2011
Reinhard Heydrich might well have been the cruelest among the many cruel National Socialist leaders. Even though Heydrich has entered history as one of the most infamous Nazi leaders, and even though he appears in some notable works of fiction, the biographies of Heydrich have been mostly journalistic in character. Now Robert Gerwarth has produced a thoroughly documented, scholarly, and eminently readable account of this mass murderer.
November 01, 2011
Richard Miles, hoping to give Carthage its due, has attempted to write an objective and comprehensive history of the sea power, from its founding as a Phoenician trading post in the eighth century BCE to its destruction by the Romans in the second century BCE. He offers a fresh and tantalizing glimpse at a world that was lost when Rome eliminated Carthage at the conclusion of the Third Punic War
October 30, 2011
In this disturbing and well-argued book that was researched and written prior to the Arab Spring, Katerina Dalacoura casts serious doubt on the idea that the Arab Spring uprisings will help provide an alternative outlet for the grievances of more moderate Islamists, questioning the ability of democracy to allay the scourge of Islamist terrorism.
October 26, 2011
Against nearly all other leftists writing about rightists, Corey Robin believes that there is only one kind of conservatism. Whether expressed in the lofty words of Burke or the rambling ravings of Palin, conservatism is always and everywhere a resentful attack on those who seek to make the world more fair. Take away the left and you destroy the rationale for the right.
October 25, 2011
Richard Brookhiser saves his central argument for his final pages, and it might have been wiser to bring it out more explicitly much earlier. Madison left two legacies, Brookhiser suggests. One is the manifest legacy. But Madison’s “other monument, coequal if not greater,” Brookhiser concludes, “is American politics,” meaning “the behavior that makes constitutionalism work.”
October 24, 2011
Illustrating Empire, published by the Bodleian Library at Oxford to accompany its trove of printed historical objects, is full of images that navigate nearly every aspect of British imperialism. And every image is helpfully accompanied by brief explanatory notes. The net effect is a more complete (although naturally biased) picture of the British Empire.
October 23, 2011
Kevin McMahon argues that in looking for justices, Nixon focused on how their appointment and performance would help his own electoral prospects. the overall picture, in McMahon’s telling, is one in which Nixon cared about ideological conformity but only with respect to anti-busing and pro-law-and-order positions (as opposed to other hot-button issues like pornography, speech, and religion) and not very strongly.
October 18, 2011
A book on why to read another book is, you might think, redundant, especially when there are so many predecessors that illuminate Moby-Dick, and by non-slouches such as D. H. Lawrence, C.L.R. James, and Charles Olson, as well as the fine recent biography of Melville by Andrew Delbanco. But the idea behind the current genre, I suppose, begins with the premise that a hard and serious book demands not only the fidgety reader’s patience but also a sort of trial marriage, or at least an initial date.
by Todd Gitlin
October 17, 2011
Horacio Castellanos Moya's fiction is deeply concerned with the machinations of politics and, in particular, the deleterious effects of political violence. And it dresses down its grisly subjects with a raucous, biting style.
October 16, 2011
This book is a story of failure—the failure of the Islamic Republic, despite thirty years of propaganda and political education, to inculcate in a new generation of Iranians faith in the ideology of the regime. The children of the revolution of 1979 have turned their backs on its values; and this was nowhere more evident than in the mass protests against the manipulated presidential elections of 2009.
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November 03, 1946
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is his outstanding single achievement. Written in 1905, it remains to this day—despite the fact that the lot of most workers has improved relatively—almost unmatched in America as a condemnation of the basic evils of capitalism. Read More
April 08, 1945
The United States government must soon pass judgment on the Bretton Woods Conference, in which the representatives of 44 nations proposed that there be set up an International Monetary Fund and an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It is no exaggeration to say that the peace of the world and the future of international political and economic cooperation hang in the balance. It is imperative, therefore, to weigh carefully once again the principal criticisms which have been made against Bretton Woods, to answer them fully and in detail. Read More
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From the Back of the Book
October 26, 2011
Can We Admire China’s Urban Planning Without Admiring Its Government?
It has a centralized, repressive government for which its citizens do not vote. Local authorities come to people’...
October 26, 2011
How the Liberal Supreme Court of the 1960s Helped Shape America’s Reactionary Criminal Justice System
The Collapse of American Criminal Justice By William J. Stuntz (Harvard University Press, 413 pp., $35) William Stuntz...
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