Entries

Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Worki

Here are two important books that stake out important positions in the looming debate over the future of the Republican party and the conservative movement: Grover Norquist Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, and Our Lives and Ross Douthat & Reihan Salam Grand …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Reagan's Disciple: George W. Bush's Troubled Quest

Bush on the Couch 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. HereÕs Jacob Weisberg: ÒThe presidentÕs inability to master his feelings toward his parents drove …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off

Here are two important books that stake out important positions in the looming debate over the future of the Republican party and the conservative movement: Grover Norquist Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, and Our Lives and Ross Douthat & …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Scenes of Clerical Life

One of my more frequent email correspondents cites an assigned reading of George Eliot’s Middlemarch as one of the great traumas of his college years. Eliot – the pseudonym of course of Mary Ann Evan – is one of the more daunting of the Victorian writers to our contemporary …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Last Mughal

In The Last Mughal , William Dalrymple evokes a lost world: old Delhi before the Indian Mutiny and the ensuing destruction of much of the venerable capital of the Mughals. Dalrymple's depiction of the city is unabashedly nostalgic. We hear the plash of fountains in courtyards, the chant of Urdu …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past

I read Bruce Bartlett's Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past in typescript some months ago. I was tempted to blog about it then, but out of authorial comity decided to wait until the published version was available for everyone to read. I've been chomping at the bit ever since. …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush

Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush , scored an amazing coup in gaining six hours of interview time with the president shortly after the 2004 presidential election. It's not Draper's fault that the President declined to say anything very interesting in those …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Roman Triumph

Fashion sways everything, the writing of history very much included. For a generation, the fashion in Roman history has been to emphasize the uncanniness and archaism of Roman customs, the wild incommensurability between Roman mentalities and those of the present day. By contrast, in her …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Civil War: Vol 3, Red River to Appomattox

Last week, I at last completed listening to the final volume of Shelby Foote's civil war trilogy: The Civil War Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox I'd expressed some qualms at the start of the series, but volume 2 won me - and volume 3 overwhelmed me. As the war becomes more terrible, Foote's …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

Full Circle

"Very flat country, Poland." So said long-time NR contributor and new Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski, as we whizzed at 90 miles an hour on the two-lane highway west from Warsaw. He's right of course, even though at the time I was more interested in the deadly game of zip and pass he was …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconcei

Theodore Dalrymple is the pseudonym of Anthony Daniels, a British prison psychatrist well known I think to NRO readers for his dark, intimate views of the bottom of British society. His short new book, part of the "Brief Encounters" series generalizes from his observations into what can only be …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

The Death of the Grown-Up

In The Death of the Grown-Up , Washington Times columnist Diana West has produced an ambitious, sophisticated, and closely argued case that the ills of American culture can be traced to a society-wide revulsion from the obligations and responsibilities of adulthood. The thesis has been heard …

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Written by David Frum on Thursday February 19, 2009

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

American Notes

Charles Dickens' em> American Notes Domestic Habits of the Americans

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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