It seems everywhere I look another book I want to read comes out. I just finished Children of Men last week, which I loved (yes, I know that didn’t just come out). And I’m reading Cultural Amnesia piecemeal — as it should be. I need to finish Brink Lindsey’s provocative and brisk The Age of Abundance (See George Will’s largely glowing review in the NYT here) which Ramesh and Brink debate a bit in the current issue of NR. But the book I really can’t put down is Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man. Partly, this is because I’ve spent a lot of time dwelling in similar trenches over the last couple years and so I’m familiar with some of the material and was keenly interested to see what she made of it. But mostly, I can’t put it down because it’s such a great read. I’m about 100 pages in and it moves almost effortlessly over complex material with envy-making lucidity. I suspect I may have some serious disagreements (I may not, I need to see where she goes with some of the things she says early in the book), but I’ll deal with all that in my review for The Claremont Review of Books.

For years, a few conservative and libertarian authors — and even some mainstream liberal historians — have been mounting raids against the enormous edifice of New Deal mythology. These guys — Jim Powell, Murray Rothbard, Thomas J. Flemming and many others — have done some great work, but for the most part they’ve failed to win hearts and minds far outside their own circles. Shlaes’ book — whatever fault some may find in it — is the first book in a long while that might actually move the frontline deep into the other side’s territory. For Coolidge lovers, devotees of political history and others interested in revisiting issues desperately in need of revisiting, I think this makes for great summer reading. I just wish I had it as a resource a couple years ago.