Entries

A Breed of Heroes

em> A Breed of Heroes

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Nudge

Cass Sunstein's and Richard Thaler's Nudge has deservedly won praise as one of the most important public policy books of the year. Nudge builds on insights from the new school of behavioral economics, of which Richard Thaler is a leading light. Thaler and others in the school have …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Spies of Warsaw

There's not much to say about Alan Furst's The Spies of Warsaw . It is not the author's best work, and even contains a rare solecism: one of the characters is described as having served as "ambassador to Singapore," obviously an impossibility in 1937. Still, for those who love Furst's …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Kept in the Dark

Kept in the Dark em>

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Fathers and Sons

Some weeks ago, I read an article in a newspaper that contained this striking sentence: For the first time in history, teenagers can say to their parents, "You're, like, so lame," and deep down, the parents may wonder whether their kids are right .... The author of that sentence …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Kim

Rudyard Kipling's Kim has ranked high on the list of forbidden books for more than half a century. Edward Said's judgment - "a rich and absolutely fascinating, but nevertheless profoundly embarrassing novel" - actually tilts toward the generous side. You can certainly see why the novel …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Complete Roman Army

Oh my gosh, what a cool book is The Complete Roman Army by Adrian Goldsworthy! Minutely detailed, lavishly illustrated, the only thing that disappointed me was the sad awareness of how much pleasure this book would have given my 14-year-old self had it been available then! The drawings of …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

After Adrian Goldsworthy's outstanding biography of Julius Caesar (David's Bookshelf 72), the chronologically minded reader will almost inevitably next turn to Anthony Everitt's Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor . After all, Everitt's biography of Cicero was widely praised, and …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Ca

Titles matter! I took up Philip Lawler's The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture in the belief that I would be reading ... well just what the title said, a study of the secularization of Massachusetts Catholicism. For my purposes, Lawler's book opened very …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Intellectuals and the Flag

After the 9/11 terror attacks, the academic and writer Todd Gitlin bought an American flag and hung it from his terrace. Oh you say: So did you? So did millions of people? Yes they did. But Gitlin is a well-known left-wing writer and academic, whose record of fierce protest dates back beyond …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The New Case Against Immigration

What a pleasure it is when a friend writes a thoroughly excellent book! Mark Krikorian's em> The New Case Against Immigration

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Nero

It should be made clear from the start that Edward Champlin's Nero is not a biography in the usual sense of the term. Champlin, professor of classics at Princeton, has devoted his life to teasing meaning from obscure fragments of the Latin world. (I see from his bibliography that one of …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizat

At the Passover seder, a young child traditionally asks four questions about the mysterious goings-on: why do we eat bitter herbs dipped in salt water, why do we eat reclining, and so on. The questions introduce the Passover narrative, the story of the exodus from Egypt. For the historicall…

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Felix Holt, The Radical

em> Felix Holt, The Radical

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Mill on the Floss

I ended up listening to The Mill on the Floss twice through, and for that I blame the fact that I have been doing more running and less stair-climbing recently. When I run, I usually prefer to listen to music rather than books. Result : whereas normally I listen to a book in big chunks of …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Romola

Almost nobody has a good word to say for Romola , George Eliot's fourth full-length novel: a historical romance set in 15th century Florence. I admire Eliot so much that I ignored all warnings, downloaded the enormous thing from Audible.com, and took notes with a view to defying the …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

London 1945

I'd had Maureen Waller's em> London 1945

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and

In his new book arguing the case for America's coming decline as a world power, Fareed Zakaria makes much of the fact that many of the world's most grandiose pieces of Americana are no longer located in the United States: the world's biggest shopping mall, the world's biggest Ferris wheel, etc. …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Caesar: Life of a Colossus

Can there possibly be any justification for a new biography of Julius Caesar? Adrian Goldsworthy's em> Caesar: Life of a Colossus

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Bush Tragedy

George W. Bush may be among the least introspective men ever to hold the presidency. But no worries! There are plenty of volunteers eager to do his self-examination for him. Here’s Jacob Weisberg : “The president’s inability to master his feelings toward his parents drove …

Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009