Landslide, I Alone Can Fix It, and Peril
LANDSLIDE: THE FINAL DAYS OF THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY By Michael Wolff I ALONE CAN FIX IT: DONALD J. TRUMP’S CATASTROPHIC FINAL YEAR By Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker PERIL By Bob Woodward and Robert...
View ArticleImpostors
IMPOSTORS: HOW REPUBLICANS QUIT GOVERNING AND SEIZED AMERICAN POLITICS By Steve Benen At the 2020 Republican National Convention, gearing up for that year’s presidential election, the Republican Party...
View ArticleOn Consolation
ON CONSOLATION: FINDING SOLACE IN DARK TIMES By Michael Ignatieff Even the happiest life is filled with disappointments, heartaches, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. And in such...
View ArticleLiar’s Circus
LIAR’S CIRCUS By Carl Hoffman I wasn’t expecting much out of Liar’s Circus, a bit of investigative and immersive journalism by Carl Hoffman that recounts his time spent on the road attending a series...
View ArticleSpeaking of Universities and The Tyranny of Virtue
SPEAKING OF UNIVERSITIES By Stefan Collini THE TYRANNY OF VIRTUE: IDENTITY, THE ACADEMY, AND THE HUNT FOR POLITICAL HERESIES By Robert Boyers Headlines about universities, and the Humanities in...
View ArticleMaking Darkness Light
MAKING DARKNESS LIGHT: A LIFE OF JOHN MILTON By Joe Moshenska When the biographer Edmund Morris was given the job of writing an authorized life of Ronald Reagan he found himself at a bit of a loss as...
View ArticleReign of Terror
REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP By Spencer Ackerman Most of the time, when people speak of American exceptionalism they mean it as something to be proud of, if...
View ArticleThe Decadent Society and On Decline
THE DECADENT SOCIETY: HOW WE BECAME VICTIMS OF OUR OWN SUCCESS By Ross Douthat ON DECLINE: STAGNATION, NOSTALGIA, AND WHY EVERY YEAR IS THE WORST ONE EVER By Andrew Potter It’s ironic that the age of...
View ArticleThe Anatomy of Fascism
THE ANATOMY OF FASCISM By Robert O. Paxton Robert Paxton begins this authoritative account of fascism by calling it “the major political innovation of the twentieth century.” There’d been nothing like...
View ArticleWildland
WILDLAND: THE MAKING OF AMERICA’S FURY By Evan Osnos I’ve written before about how the dominant political emotion of our age is anger, a point brought home just by looking at a list of some of the...
View ArticleArguing with Zombies
ARGUING WITH ZOMBIES: ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND THE FIGHT FOR A BETTER FUTURE By Paul Krugman One thing that becomes clearer as you get older is that there’s no point in arguing with some people. Unless...
View ArticleThe Lost Decade
THE LOST DECADE 2010 – 2020 By Polly Toynbee and David Walker Given the horrors of the last ten years and the “rightward lurch” toward authoritarianism in Western countries, it’s easy to forget the...
View ArticleThe Lost Battles
THE LOST BATTLES By Jonathan Jones There’s a line of thinking that has it that what made Florence such a cauldron of genius in the Renaissance, indeed what made the Italian Renaissance, was the fury of...
View ArticleI Just Wrote This Five Minutes Ago . . .
I JUST WROTE THIS FIVE MINUTES AGO . . . By Carl Watts The title of this collection of essays, addressing not just contemporary poetry itself but its reception and what used to be known as the scene,...
View ArticleMussolini’s Daughter
MUSSOLINI’S DAUGHTER: THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN EUROPE By Caroline Moorehead Writing the biography of very famous people can’t be easy. For some perennially popular subjects the field is now so...
View ArticleThe Storm Is Upon Us
THE STORM IS UPON US: HOW QANON BECAME A MOVEMENT, CULT, AND CONSPIRACY THEORY OF EVERYTHING By Mike Rothschild There’s a school of thought, and it’s one I’m inclined to ally with, that has it that the...
View ArticlePersonality and Power
PERSONALITY AND POWER: BUILDERS AND DESTROYERS OF MODERN EUROPE By Ian Kershaw The role of the individual in history is a timeless debating topic precisely because it can never be definitively...
View ArticleThe Dawn Watch
THE DAWN WATCH: JOSEPH CONRAD IN A GLOBAL WORLD By Maya Jasanoff The title of Maya Jasanoff’s book has to be unpacked. The significance of the dawn watch has to do, I think, with her theory about how...
View ArticleThe Immoral Majority, Jesus and John Wayne, The Power Worshippers, and Unholy
THE IMMORAL MAJORITY: HOW EVANGELICALS CHOSE POLITICAL POWER OVER CHRISTIAN VALUES By Ben Howe JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE: HOW WHITE EVANGELICALS CORRUPTED A FAITH AND FRACTURED A NATION By Kristin Kobes Du...
View ArticleHow the South Won the Civil War
HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR By Heather Cox Richardson Books on history directed at a general audience tend to run to two extremes: either doorstops that go over the same old ground in ever greater...
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