The Forgotten Failures of the Great Society
A review of Great Society: A New History, by Amity Shlaes.
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Two Guys from Queens
Fred Siegel reviews Tailspin: The People and Forces behind America’s Fifty-Year Fall—and Those Fighting to Reverse It, by Steven Brill.
Crumbs of the Upper Crust
Three informative new books that all deal with the politics of our ruling class.
Dysfunctional Government
This book speaks directly to the malaise that has accompanied Barack Obama’s second term in office. “The West,” write John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, “has lost confidence in the way ...
A Bridge to Nowhere
The New Yorker, writes well, he’s reasonably fair-minded in his characterization of well-known events, and he has a talent for painting pen portraits of the lesser-known characters Obama interacts with. ...
Herbert Croly’s American Bismarcks
Herbert Croly’s 1909 book The Promise of American Life, the ur-text of pre–World War I progressivism, was still essential reading for 1960s college students. In 1965 alone, the book was ...
A Wolfe Tome
Alan Wolfe of Boston College is a prolific and generally well-regarded author. In the last five years he’s published four books on contemporary politics and public policy: The Transformation of ...
‘Mr. Big’ in the Big City
For the past year, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has been on a perpetual campaign for higher office. He’s toured the country and run an ad campaign touting his ...