Overview for Book Reviews

Paris: The Biography of a City

The city of Paris is not exactly an under-exposed subject. Still, Colin Jones’ history of the city deserves a special place on the shelf, the best single volume I have yet read on the evolution of this most beloved of world cities. If you want to understand the geography of this beloved …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Independent Nation

John P. Avlon's Independent Nation would be an interesting book under any circumstances. Avlon is a marvelously vivid writer, with a minute knowledge of U.S. political history. But since its author is also chief speechwriter to Rudy Giuliani, Independent Nation is also an important book. …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Do they still assign Tess of the D'Urbervilles in high school English? I was required to to read it in the spring of 1978, and loathed it. I understood even as a student why Thomas Hardy would feature so prominently on the curriculum. Hopeful teachers imagined that Hardy's disdain for …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Economy of Modern India

In The Importance of Being Earnest , the tutor Miss Prism instructs her student Cecily to omit “The Fall of the Rupee” from her reading in political economy: It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side. As often with Oscar Wilde’…

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Through German Eyes

I am sorry to say that I was a little disappointed by Christopher Duffy's em> Through German Eyes: The British and the Somme 1916 Forgotten Victory

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Ulysses

I am going to break one of my own rules here. I spent much of the month of May listening to Victor Hugo's Les Miserables as my audiobook. 60 hours - that's a lot of workouts! I was (no surprise here) dazzled by it. So much so that my blog on the book remains unfinished. (I should have blogged …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

An Economic History of India

In The Importance of Being Earnest, the tutor Miss Prism instructs her student Cecily to omit ÒThe Fall of the RupeeÓ from her reading in political economy: It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side. As often with Oscar WildeÕs jokes, this one …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Lying About Hitler

If works of history can ever be described as "heroic," then surely Richard Evans' exhaustive and meticulous Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial meets the test. Evans is a professor of modern German history at Cambridge University, author of the definitive …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's em> Infidel

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Wal-Mart Revolution

Suppose there were a company that saved low-income American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars - created new jobs and opportunities for tens of thousands of people in poor and rural areas of the country - and introduced the greatest range of productivity innovations by any one company since …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Les Miserables

It’s almost obligatory to begin any comment on Victor Hugo with Andre Gide’s famous answer when asked to name France’s greatest poet: “Victor Hugo, alas.” I think I understand what Gide meant. Hugo’s prose masterwork, Les Miserables , stretches over …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Blood of Victory

Speaking of spy fiction - spy literature I should say in this case - I finished the audiobook of Alan Furst's Blood of Victory on the elliptical machine yesterday. Who is the original author of the line, "Those who like this kind of thing will find that it is just the kind of thing they like"? …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Pere Goriot

em> Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Man Who Saved Britain

In my house, books are distributed room to room on principles that have a good deal more to do with the availability of shelving than any kind of bibliographic logic. My bedroom contains poetry, travel, and my stockpile of books bought or sent but not yet read. And, ulp, there are some 200 books in …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Simon Bolivar: A Life

Simon Bolivar: A Life by John Lynch. (Yale 2006.) A good modern biography of Bolivar is much needed. This plodding volume is not it. How on earth do you manage to make the life of Bolivar of all people dull? This book offers few fresh insights into the thinking of one of the most arresting …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Mussolini's Italy

RJB Bosworth's Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship 1915-1945 is an intermittently interesting but deeply, deeply flawed social history of - well just what it says, life under Mussolini's dictatorship. At its best, the book gives fascinating little glimpses into the poverty …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Old Curiosity Shop

The Old Curiosity Shop is neither the most famous nor by any definition the greatest of Charles Dickens' novels. But it does however contain one of Dickens' very most famous scenes - a scene famous only slightly more in itself than for the famously bitchy quip it elicited from Oscar Wilde: "One …

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Written by David Frum on Monday February 2, 2009

Blood of the Liberals

I first met George Packer in the fall of 1978, when we were both college freshmen. Shortly before the term began, I had received a letter announcing that I had been accepted into an undergraduate program called "Directed Studies." The letter came as a surprise, since I had not applied for the …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday January 22, 2009