From the new issue, here’s the beginning of (the great!) David Pryce-Jones review of Paul Berman’s new book, Power and the Idealists:

In modern times, the Left has been wrong about everything important — with the one exception of Nazism. Wrong about Stalin, wrong about Mao and Castro, wrong to support North Vietnam and the Sandinistas and Milosevic, wrong, wrong, wrong. And now the Left comes out to say that Saddam Hussein should have been allowed to stay in power, and his overthrow is worse than a mistake, indeed a crime. The enthusiasm for dictators is really quite extraordinary, except that it is so absolutely ordinary.
Why does the ideology of the Left give priority to totalitarianism over straightforward human freedom? Why is the Left habitually blind to the real victims? Probably there is no fully satisfying explanation of these central political conundrums, but Paul Berman explores them with insights all his own, and what’s more, in prose of strength, subtlety, and even humor.

No word-mincing, clear prose, no fear of calling a spade a spade or a demented liberal a demented liberal – that’s what you see above, and that’s what you will see throughout each and every issue of National Review, of which a convenient and affordable Digital edition (available in Text, Image, and PDF formats) can be ordered here.