Christmas Book Recommendations
Christmas Book Recommendations • • (Since that forlorn day when the last five-cent cigar receded into the haze, the best Christmas gift for your money has been a good book. Not necessarily a new...
...Perhaps too clever by half, but fun also for many other reasons, and illuminating...
...Whoever is not immunized against all varieties of totalitarianism by reading and reflecting on this book is beyond the reach of rational and compassionate human beings...
...The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, edited by Oscar and Mary Handlin (Harvard University Press, 1966...
...Especially appropriate for 1976—the bicentennial of its publication as well as of the Declaration of Independence, both of which reflected the same philosophy of freedom...
...I read it for the first time this summer, by accident...
...26 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 197...
...Freedom and Reform, by Frank H. Knight (reprint of 1947 edition, Kennicat, $12.50...
...Don't expect ever to see a better book on the creation of the Republic than Gordon Wood's...
...22.50...
...Palmer brings a vast knowledge under control in smooth readable sentences to provide an authentic account of how far Europeans had come it their thought and statescraft when the Americans lifted from the drawing board their design for the first comprehensive 24 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 197' and enduring experience in popular government...
...The text is an insightful discussion of why collectivism triumphed despite the great success of laissez-faire...
...Mann's whole work is concerned with the tension of Western civilization...
...The Cannon edition is best but the most readily available are the Modern Library Giant edition ($4.95) and the Penguin edition ($2.95...
...Faustus, by Thomas Mann...
...Still one of the most readable and entertaining among the influential unread books of all time...
...Democracy and Education, by John Dewey (Free Press, paperback, $2.75...
...Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo (Vintage, paper, $1.95...
...John Cammett, Dean of Faculty, John Jay College...
...My five book reading suggestions would be as follows: First, read the Federalist Papers twice...
...An inspiring expression of the human spirit...
...Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution...
...8.95...
...Five that will help Grandpa and the literate cousins celebrate the founding of The Republic are worthy of honorable mention in any selection of best books: The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, by Gordon S. Wood (University of North Carolina Press, 1970...
...Author of City Politics (with Edward C. Banfield), Political Organizations, Thinking about Crime...
...If you have supposed that the small farmers and the fishermen didn't know what was going on when the lawyers, the planters, and the rich merchants were writing declarations and drafting constitutions the Handlins have a big, big surprise waiting for you...
...The introduction to the second edition is remarkably prescient in foreseeing the ultimate results of the early welfare-state measures: "The Mental Deficiency Act is the first step along a path on which no sane man can decline to enter, but which, if too far pursued, will bring statesmen across difficulties hard to meet without considerable interference with individual liberty...
...Three-volume boxed set: $38.95 PUNISHING CRIMINALS by Ernest Van Den Haag...
...The Life of Reason, by George Santa-yana...
...you will have to look for it in second-hand bookstores...
...Paperback by Norton, $3.45...
...She started her story with the first settlements, missed nothing mat I already knew, and thoroughly convinced me that popular control of government was far more deeply rooted in colonial America than I had suspected...
...Still one of the most readable and entertaining among the influential unread books of all time...
...Here, admirably related, is just about everything one could wish to know about what the Founding Fathers said, what they did, and what persuaded them...
...The book is brilliant in its insights and warm and compassionate in tone...
...Not necessarily a new book, but a timeless one, a book that will call forth the spirits of understanding, that will challenge the literary imagination, that at once will inform and delight...
...Author of Execution Eve, God and Man at Yale, The Unmaking of a Mayor...
...Somebody said somewhere it's the most important book of our time...
...I know of no better Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Ambassador to the United Nations...
...Liberal Parents, Radical Children, by Midge Decter (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, $7.95...
...if charged, I would plead extenuating circumstances: how could one read this book and not be deeply influenced by it...
...The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton (Alfred A. Knopf, $7.95...
...Dicey, 2d edition (1914), Macmillan, no longer in print...
...Sidney Hook Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, New York University...
...In doing so, we hope to provide not only useful advice, but also some insight into the workings and frolics of nine extraordinary literary and political minds...
...The Structure of Science, by Ernest Nagel (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $12.95...
...The Handlins present the judgments and the arguments that came out of Massachusetts' town meetings when they were called upon to approve or reject two drafts of a state constitution...
...Fred Graham, The New York Times...
...The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith...
...That totals five books...
...The Bible of criminology...
...One of the wisest books on the nature, limits, and possibilities of human experience...
...Author of The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, Beyond the Melting Pot (with Nathan Glazer...
...I know of no better Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Ambassador to the United Nations...
...Putnam, $9.95...
...The most powerful and persuasive case for the democratic way of life...
...The Victorian lore supplied may be BASIC BOOKS to EAST 53RD ST 'NEW YORK 10022 THE MAFIA MYSTIQUE by Dwight C. Smith, Jr...
...it remains only to add that rarely has the decline of representative government been set down with such eloquence and documentation...
...Chesterton...
...Perhaps too clever by half, but fun also for many other reasons, and illuminating...
...Restores perspective to the ideology versus interests explanations of the origins of the revolution...
...A fascinating, even exciting, insight into Mill, and a wonderfully illuminating account of what went wrong with modern liberalism...
...This is its culmination...
...second, read de Tocqueville on Democracy in America three times...
...republished (in 1967) by the Cambridge University Press together with an important preface to the second edition in which Stephen replied to critics...
...On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill, by Gertrude Himmelfarb (Alfred A. Knopf, $8.95...
...The Age of the Democratic Revolution, Volume I: The Challenge, by R.R...
...Mill's essay On Liberty is hardly worth sweeping up...
...Its subtitle is "A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome" but I think of it as the first and greatest piece of ethnology, i.e...
...10...
...The Life of Reason, by George Santa-yana...
...12.95—read it and see...
...Just read it again...
...15 cloth, $3.45 paper...
...If you have supposed that the small farmers and the fishermen didn't know what was going on when the lawyers, the planters, and the rich merchants were writing declarations and drafting constitutions the Handlins have a big, big surprise waiting for you...
...Author of The Quest for Community, Social Change and History, The Twilight of Authority...
...One of the wisest books on the nature, limits, and possibilities of human experience...
...The most powerful and persuasive case for the democratic way of life...
...15.95...
...The vision that should guide the reform and reconstruction of America...
...Due September 1975 $10.95 UNDERSTANDING HUMAN BEHAVIOR FOR EFFECTIVE POLICE WORK by Harold E. Russell A Allan BeigeL Provides practical Information for the police officer that is free of professional jargon and applicable directly to his work...
...An inspiring expression of the human spirit...
...Any reason offered here would be irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent...
...I suggest the Bible—which, if you cannot get it through regular commercial outlets, is readily available in most hotels...
...The book is brilliant in its insights and warm and compassionate in tone...
...Fred Graham, The New York Times...
...22.50...
...Author of Execution Eve, God and Man at Yale, The Unmaking of a Mayor...
...The Ancient City, by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges...
...15 cloth, $3.45 paper...
...Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville...
...Dicey, 2d edition (1914), Macmillan, no longer in print...
...The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, edited by Oscar and Mary Handlin (Harvard University Press, 1966...
...Author of The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, Politics, Planning and the Public Interest (with Martin Meyerson), The Unheavenly City Revisited...
...A novel of still underestimated literary and psychological value...
...Author of The Jewish Mystique, Punishing Criminals...
...Robert Nisbet Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities, Columbia University...
...A novel of still underestimated literary and psychological value...
...We Learned to Ski, by Harold Evans, Brian Jackman, and Mark Ottaway...
...Especially appropriate for 1976—the bicentennial of its publication as well as of the Declaration of Independence, both of which reflected the same philosophy of freedom...
...Again, don't put it off...
...The Pound Era, by Hugh Kenner (Univ...
...Again, don't put it off...
...Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville...
...Liberal Parents, Radical Children, by Midge Decter (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, $7.95...
...I'll go along...
...I pale at the thought that I might have died without having read it...
...paperback edition $3.50...
...Lecturer in Psychology and Sociology, New School for Social Research...
...Due November 1975 512.95 Illustrated The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 25 diagnosis of our present major problem...
...A magnificent articulation of the contemporary naturalistic outlook in philosophy...
...The Frontiersman, by Allan W. Eckert (Little-Brown, 1967...
...An informative and critical exposition of scientific method by one of the keenest minds of our time...
...Five that will help Grandpa and the literate cousins celebrate the founding of The Republic are worthy of honorable mention in any selection of best books: The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, by Gordon S. Wood (University of North Carolina Press, 1970...
...The Handlins present the judgments and the arguments that came out of Massachusetts' town meetings when they were called upon to approve or reject two drafts of a state constitution...
...Robert Nisbet Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities, Columbia University...
...Charles S. Hyneman Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Indiana University...
...Palmer (Princeton University Press, 1969...
...Lecturer in Psychology and Sociology, New School for Social Research...
...The Bible of criminology...
...The best suspense-crime novel I've read in years...
...This is its culmination...
...Just read it again...
...A fascinating analysis of the American pamphlet literature preceding the revolution...
...Every time I dip into this book I wonder if I may not be guilty of near-plagiarism...
...If you have already read the Federalist Papers and de Tocqueville once, you may reduce your re-readings of them and add one or two new titles to the list...
...15.95...
...you will have to look for it in second-hand bookstores...
...Execution Eve, by William F. Buckley, Jr...
...12.95—read it and see...
...James Q. Wilson Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, Harvard University...
...Putnam, $9.95...
...John Cammett, Dean of Faculty, John Jay College...
...If you have already read that, then my final suggestion is to read Dostoevski, The Possessed, the best literary account written of what life might be like for people who do not understand what the Federalist Papers, de Tocqueville, and Schumpeter are trying to tell us...
...systematic revelation of the nonlogical basis of social organization...
...Heavy guns—moral, logical, and rhetorical—boom and what is left of J .S...
...Milton Friedman Paul S. Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago...
...Author of The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, Beyond the Melting Pot (with Nathan Glazer...
...Don't expect ever to see a better book on the creation of the Republic than Gordon Wood's...
...That totals five books...
...Its subtitle is "A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome" but I think of it as the first and greatest piece of ethnology, i.e...
...Author of Capitalism and Freedom, Essays in Positive Economics...
...of California Press, $14.95, paper $6.95...
...Any reason offered here would be irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent...
...I read it for the first time this summer, by accident...
...Due November 1975 512.95 Illustrated The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 25 diagnosis of our present major problem...
...The Pound Era, by Hugh Kenner (Univ...
...of California Press, $14.95, paper $6.95...
...Ernest van den Haag Professor of Social Philosophy at New York University...
...Author of Hero in History, The Paradoxes of Freedom, Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life...
...Author of The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, Politics, Planning and the Public Interest (with Martin Meyerson), The Unheavenly City Revisited...
...Argues that the punishment of crime must be understood and upheld as a basic obligation of society...
...The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn (Harvard University Press, $9.50...
...The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn (Harvard University Press, $9.50...
...Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, by James Fitzjames Stephen, first published in 1873...
...Ernest van den Haag Professor of Social Philosophy at New York University...
...Finally, Grandpa and the cousins ought to know what was going on across the mountains, among the tall trees and in the clearings, when constitution-making was the big thing on the East Coast...
...Due September 1975 $10.95 UNDERSTANDING HUMAN BEHAVIOR FOR EFFECTIVE POLICE WORK by Harold E. Russell A Allan BeigeL Provides practical Information for the police officer that is free of professional jargon and applicable directly to his work...
...Milton Friedman Paul S. Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago...
...Democracy and Education, by John Dewey (Free Press, paperback, $2.75...
...Martin's Press, 1975...
...Argues that the punishment of crime must be understood and upheld as a basic obligation of society...
...systematic revelation of the nonlogical basis of social organization...
...First published in 1864 (La Cite Antique), now in paperback as a Doubleday Anchor Book, $2.50...
...Author of Hero in History, The Paradoxes of Freedom, Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life...
...it's still believable and absorbing...
...Freedom and Reform, by Frank H. Knight (reprint of 1947 edition, Kennicat, $12.50...
...Execution Eve, by William F. Buckley, Jr...
...We offer here gift suggestions from some of the writers whose books would top our own list of recommendations...
...Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century, by A.V...
...The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth (Bantam, $1.95)—in case you haven't...
...The Cannon edition is best but the most readily available are the Modern Library Giant edition ($4.95) and the Penguin edition ($2.95...
...The Victorian lore supplied may be BASIC BOOKS to EAST 53RD ST 'NEW YORK 10022 THE MAFIA MYSTIQUE by Dwight C. Smith, Jr...
...Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick (Basic Books, $12.95...
...The vision that should guide the reform and reconstruction of America...
...New York Times "Excellent...Greatly superior to the existing literature on ethnicity and organized crime...
...Should be read by everyone with a serious interest In books about organized crime...
...Liberal Parents, Radical Children, by Midge Decter (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, $7.95...
...Having been charmed by Marchette Chute's tour of London in Shakespeare's day I decided to humor her fancy that she knew something out of the usual about how government by the people came to North America...
...it's still believable and absorbing...
...Edward C. Banfield Kenan Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, University of Pennsylvania...
...Author of Capitalism and Freedom, Essays in Positive Economics...
...10...
...Sidney Hook Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, New York University...
...Somebody said somewhere it's the most important book of our time...
...Editor, National Review...
...William F. Buckley, Jr...
...Palmer brings a vast knowledge under control in smooth readable sentences to provide an authentic account of how far Europeans had come it their thought and statescraft when the Americans lifted from the drawing board their design for the first comprehensive 24 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 197' and enduring experience in popular government...
...Just published 515.00 CRIME AND JUSTICE edited by Sir Leon Radzinowick t Marvin E. Wolfgang...
...The Everlasting Man...
...James Q. Wilson Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, Harvard University...
...The best suspense-crime novel I've read in years...
...Just published 515.00 CRIME AND JUSTICE edited by Sir Leon Radzinowick t Marvin E. Wolfgang...
...Author of The Quest for Community, Social Change and History, The Twilight of Authority...
...Whoever is not immunized against all varieties of totalitarianism by reading and reflecting on this book is beyond the reach of rational and compassionate human beings...
...First published in 1864 (La Cite Antique), now in paperback as a Doubleday Anchor Book, $2.50...
...If you have already read that, then my final suggestion is to read Dostoevski, The Possessed, the best literary account written of what life might be like for people who do not understand what the Federalist Papers, de Tocqueville, and Schumpeter are trying to tell us...
...On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill, by Gertrude Himmelfarb (Alfred A. Knopf, $8.95...
...I pale at the thought that I might have died without having read it...
...In doing so, we hope to provide not only useful advice, but also some insight into the workings and frolics of nine extraordinary literary and political minds...
...The Gulag Archipelago, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Harper and Row, $12.50, paper $1.95...
...The Gulag Archipelago, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Harper and Row, $12.50, paper $1.95...
...Edward C. Banfield Kenan Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, University of Pennsylvania...
...Palmer (Princeton University Press, 1969...
...Author of Popular Government in America (with Charles E. Gilbert), The Supreme Court on Trial...
...Heavy guns—moral, logical, and rhetorical—boom and what is left of J .S...
...if charged, I would plead extenuating circumstances: how could one read this book and not be deeply influenced by it...
...Plenty was going on and Eckert reports enough of it in his Frontiersman to scare Grandpa half to death.all bogus for all I care...
...Every time I dip into this book I wonder if I may not be guilty of near-plagiarism...
...My first choice for the additional book would be Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Harper Torchbook, $3.95)—next to de Tocqueville, the most prophetic book about the evolution of modern society, and especially the role of intellectuals in it...
...The Ancient City, by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges...
...Life insurance companies should double their premiums to clients who have not read it...
...A magnificent articulation of the contemporary naturalistic outlook in philosophy...
...The Frontiersman, by Allan W. Eckert (Little-Brown, 1967...
...I'll go along...
...Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo (Vintage, paper, $1.95...
...Should be read by everyone with a serious interest In books about organized crime...
...The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton (Alfred A. Knopf, $7.95...
...Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick (Basic Books, $12.95...
...Not necessarily a new book, but a timeless one, a book that will call forth the spirits of understanding, that will challenge the literary imagination, that at once will inform and delight...
...Three-volume boxed set: $38.95 PUNISHING CRIMINALS by Ernest Van Den Haag...
...An informative and critical exposition of scientific method by one of the keenest minds of our time...
...Restores perspective to the ideology versus interests explanations of the origins of the revolution...
...The Rise of Guardian Democracy: The Supreme Court's Role in Voting Rights Disputes, 1845-1969, by Ward Y. Elliott (Harvard University Press, $15.00...
...An exhilarating experience...
...The title, a splendid one, suffices to indicate the importance of the subject...
...Liberal Parents, Radical Children, by Midge Decter (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, $7.95...
...8.95...
...Having been charmed by Marchette Chute's tour of London in Shakespeare's day I decided to humor her fancy that she knew something out of the usual about how government by the people came to North America...
...Moby Dick...
...New York Times "Excellent...Greatly superior to the existing literature on ethnicity and organized crime...
...paperback edition $3.50...
...My first choice for the additional book would be Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Harper Torchbook, $3.95)—next to de Tocqueville, the most prophetic book about the evolution of modern society, and especially the role of intellectuals in it...
...The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith...
...Mill's essay On Liberty is hardly worth sweeping up...
...If you have already read the Federalist Papers and de Tocqueville once, you may reduce your re-readings of them and add one or two new titles to the list...
...Martin's Press, 1975...
...William F. Buckley, Jr...
...A fascinating analysis of the American pamphlet literature preceding the revolution...
...Moby Dick...
...We offer here gift suggestions from some of the writers whose books would top our own list of recommendations...
...it remains only to add that rarely has the decline of representative government been set down with such eloquence and documentation...
...Author of City Politics (with Edward C. Banfield), Political Organizations, Thinking about Crime...
...We offe...
...second, read de Tocqueville on Democracy in America three times...
...Paperback by Norton, $3.45...
...The text is an insightful discussion of why collectivism triumphed despite the great success of laissez-faire...
...Charles S. Hyneman Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Indiana University...
...Experience and Nature, by John Dewey...
...We Learned to Ski, by Harold Evans, Brian Jackman, and Mark Ottaway...
...An exhilarating experience...
...Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, by James Fitzjames Stephen, first published in 1873...
...By far the best book I have read on the distinctive kind of conflict between the generations we began to know commencing in the 1950s...
...Editor, National Review...
...The First Liberty: A History of the Right to Vote in America, 1619-1850, by Marchette Chute (Dutton, 1969...
...The Everlasting Man...
...Faustus, by Thomas Mann...
...The Rise of Guardian Democracy: The Supreme Court's Role in Voting Rights Disputes, 1845-1969, by Ward Y. Elliott (Harvard University Press, $15.00...
...The Age of the Democratic Revolution, Volume I: The Challenge, by R.R...
...Author of The Jewish Mystique, Punishing Criminals...
...Here, admirably related, is just about everything one could wish to know about what the Founding Fathers said, what they did, and what persuaded them...
...My five book reading suggestions would be as follows: First, read the Federalist Papers twice...
...The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth (Bantam, $1.95)—in case you haven't...
...Author of Popular Government in America (with Charles E. Gilbert), The Supreme Court on Trial...
...Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century, by A.V...
...Chesterton...
...Finally, Grandpa and the cousins ought to know what was going on across the mountains, among the tall trees and in the clearings, when constitution-making was the big thing on the East Coast...
...Experience and Nature, by John Dewey...
...Mann's whole work is concerned with the tension of Western civilization...
...She started her story with the first settlements, missed nothing mat I already knew, and thoroughly convinced me that popular control of government was far more deeply rooted in colonial America than I had suspected...
...Not necessarily a new book, but a timeless one, a book that will call forth the spirits of understanding, that will challenge the literary imagination, that at once will inform and delight...
...The Structure of Science, by Ernest Nagel (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $12.95...
...republished (in 1967) by the Cambridge University Press together with an important preface to the second edition in which Stephen replied to critics...
...I suggest the Bible—which, if you cannot get it through regular commercial outlets, is readily available in most hotels...
...26 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 197...
...The First Liberty: A History of the Right to Vote in America, 1619-1850, by Marchette Chute (Dutton, 1969...
...The introduction to the second edition is remarkably prescient in foreseeing the ultimate results of the early welfare-state measures: "The Mental Deficiency Act is the first step along a path on which no sane man can decline to enter, but which, if too far pursued, will bring statesmen across difficulties hard to meet without considerable interference with individual liberty...
...By far the best book I have read on the distinctive kind of conflict between the generations we began to know commencing in the 1950s...
...The title, a splendid one, suffices to indicate the importance of the subject...
...A fascinating, even exciting, insight into Mill, and a wonderfully illuminating account of what went wrong with modern liberalism...
...Plenty was going on and Eckert reports enough of it in his Frontiersman to scare Grandpa half to death.all bogus for all I care...
...Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution...
...Life insurance companies should double their premiums to clients who have not read it...
Vol. 9 • December 1975 • No. 3
