Books for Christmas: Our annual list of holiday gift suggestions from distinguished readers and writers
Books for Christmas Our annual list of holiday gift suggestions from distinguished readers and writers. David 13 () a z JOHAN NORBERG IS A YOUNG Swedish writer who calls himself a...
...However, back in the real world, the facts are that there has never been an American President more pro-Israel (translation: pro-Jewish President) than Mr...
...Although written in 1907, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (Alfred A. Knopf) delves into the universal, timeless psyche of terrorists...
...Student's Guide to the Core Curriculum by Mark C. Henrie...
...Not only did Clark co-captain the famous Corps of Discovery with Meriwether Lewis, but he was the principal military figure in the Black Hawk War of the 1830s...
...Ann Coulter SOMEOFTHESE IHAVE READ, some are on my "To Do" list, so I shall keep my endorsements brief in hopes that the reader won't be able to tell the difference...
...Because Newsweek excerpted Chronicles, even putting Dylan on their cover, the memoir rocketed up the New York Times bestseller list—as well it should have...
...By the time she is done...
...Not only did this book change my life, but it continues to speak powerfully and prophetically to our culture today...
...by the support, if any, that is found in these four books...
...Sargent Sh river is one of the great men of honest ideals and faith in America of the last century...
...res.—, • mceplea USA Saes La, added neon exacatee- Sterneam•hiS s.4 wt tap ascrove AMER CAN MASS P.O...
...Not being content with this specialty, he branched out into Dark Voyage (Random House) which, although set in the same time period, is basically a maritime drama...
...I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot...
...In his prior books, Alan Furst captured to perfection the moral ambiguity existing in Europe between the wars...
...It was a close affair for FDR, and this book reveals that his nomination and all that followed were saved in Chicago by a young wheeler-dealer business tycoon from Boston, Joseph P. Kennedy...
...The great Bob Bartley has a sapient essay on leadership, and he certainly demonstrated that capacity in helping us revitalize AmSpec...
...Sereny lays out her cards, one by one, over the course of a riveting 800 pages...
...We have interesting writers, insightful writers, capable writers, but no great writers...
...Like that book, Sereny's Speer biography was based on dozens and dozens of hours of taped interviews with her subject, in the latter case, Hitler's friend, architect, and minister of production...
...Donald J. Trump SINCE I'VE BEEN WRITING BOOKS for close to 20 years and reading them since childhood, I think books make great gifts...
...With plaintiffs' lawyers taking away our money and our freedom, I wish more people would read The Rule of Lawyers by Walter Olson...
...Volume three, Caesar and Christ, presents a workmanlike introduction to ancient Rome, while volume eight, The Age of LouisXIV, provides the best overview of 17th century Europe I've ever encountered...
...J Vic J Have you bought anything through direct mail in VW goon J Ves J Ha How hare you paid Tor your mail order purchases...
...Bill me $1, plus shipping and handling...
...it Glenn Reynolds is a law professor ot the University of Tennessee Law School and runs Instopundit.com...
...Another biography which captured my attention was Landon Y. Jones's wonderful William Clark and the Shaping of the West...
...Or Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, as well as biographies of Dean Acheson and Jimmy Carter Andrew Carroll I'M PARTIAL TO D11...
...How much better off we would have been in life and in Roth's novel if it had been a monkey rather than Lindbergh that was sent flying across the ocean...
...stele apps...
...83-8674 444..4 Now 20' Peer into the fascinating life of Pope John Paul from his bishop years to his groundbreaking election as the first Polish Pope in 197B...
...In a straightforward way, he presents the worldview of Sigmund Freud versus the worldview of C. S. Lewis...
...What it will do is give you a weekend to savor...
...Wonder why Bush won Ohio...
...Without any help from literary critics, college professors, or Oprah, her books still sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year...
...All of this written by a man whose native tongue was not English...
...Even though Senator Kerry now has been consigned to the dustbin of history, Unfit for Command is worth reading—not DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 47 BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS only as a terrific page-turner but to show what the country would have faced save for 136,000 beloved voters in Ohio...
...IMO* 8 spe...
...The most important book of the year is Who Are We?by Samuel Huntington (Simon and Schuster...
...Ann Coulter's latest bestseller is How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must...
...Steve further recommends the companion volumes edited and introduced by Katrina—The Nation: 1865-1990 (Thunder's Mouth Press, 1990) and The Best of the Nation: 1990-2000 (Nation's Books, 2000)—also for two reasons: as a proffering of our own tradition of political heresy...
...Raoul Lionel Felder is a lawyer in New York City...
...Despite being the best known, most quoted hooks in the world, and despite their relative brevity, they are too rarely read as they were written to he read—from beginning to end...
...If America were wracked with poverty, disease, and self-doubt, the "rest of the world" would like us again...
...Do someone a favor for Christmas, especially a smart high-school or college student: buy her a copy of Atlas Shrugged, the story of a woman who ran a railroad without getting the credit she deserved, the man who was pilloried for inventing a fabulous new metal alloy, and the Washington bureaucrats who destroyed the American economy until businessmen (and women) saved it...
...This book won't change your life...
...Reading Dylan made me want to listen to old Dave Von Ronk...
...This is cautionary reading for all neoconservative& Happy Days Are Here Again by Steve Neal...
...It has been waging war against the West, off and on, since the seventh century, hutatomic bombs are a lot more dangerous than scimitars...
...it really is a book you can't put down...
...There are other essays that particularly fetched me, Paul Johnson on a certain randy ex-governor, for instance...
...I always like receiving books, especially ones I can learn from...
...If it's as compulsively readable as Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full, it's worth waiting for...
...The professor is described as having "the subconscious conviction that the framework of an established social order cannot be effectually shattered except by some form of collective or individual violence was precise and correct...
...The long-awaited new novel from the most pre-eminent social observer of postwar American life unfailingly delivers the Wolfean goods...
...You'll learn more economics by reading Henry Hazlitt's fine Economics in One Lesson...
...A book from last year is Jim Powell's FDR's Folly, which serves to set the record straight on the actual economic and political effects of the New Deal...
...Countries like Russia, China, India, and Japan already know this...
...They gave us Andrew Jackson, Douglas MacArthur, and Merle Haggard, among many others...
...First, Tom Wolfe's I Am . Charlotte Simmons is his finest novel to date...
...For these new editions, Adams has recolored much of the artwork, mostly to its enhancement, but some purists, craving the old-school four-color candy-dot hues, should surf eBay to procure the originals...
...America's best reporter and novelist captures the excesses of 21st century college life with piercing wit and pathos...
...Andrew Carroll is editor ofWa r Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars...
...But don't start reading it when you have a test coming up...
...He masters both Washington's panoramic operational view of the battlefield and the soldiers' perspective on the ground...
...Camp Hill, PA 17012-6452 4-R0 CON-1 487-12 o Name Address City BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS ate and has mastered the greatest of all acquired mysteries—the English sentence...
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...Pundits have suggested that the book and its fortuitous pre-election publication date were actually meant to speak out against President Bush and his policies...
...Just buy 5 Lox tor S1 lour stappinj and tenlino) one wealth your books and FREE Get ifei Trento* s catmeg...
...Moral power" (or "stylistic power" or whatever it is the French think they deploy) is not reliable power in the world and shouldn't be...
...Reading this book is an essential act for young people unfamiliar with the most important conflict in history ifr Robert D. Novak is a nationally syndicated columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a CNN commentator...
...Spared the death penalty, he spent 20 years in prison and the remainder of his life, up to his death in 1981, producing acclaimed autobiographies, forever trying to shade and shape history's view of him...
...Perhaps that's why their leaders were not panting for the candidate in the U.S...
...With several changes likely on the Supreme Courtover the next few years, it's a good time to think seriously about the Constitution and American jurisprudence...
...Includes thoughts on today's world issues 34-4202 /vacs NM 20...
...the Scots-Irish...
...Thomas More, I would recommend the new A Thomas More Source Book (Catholic University ofArnerica Press) edited by Gerard B. Wegemer and Stephen W. Smith...
...Give me that fora lever, and I'll move the world...
...The following books are among my favorites: The Bible In Search of History by Theodore H. White...
...To please the history buff in your circle of loved ones, log on to www.bibliofind.com and order him or her a copy of Gitta Sereny's out-of-print 1995 landmark, Albert Speer: His Rattle with Truth...
...This is easily the best of the college FOR LOVERS OF GBE.vr FICTION and DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 49 BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS guides, with thoughtful critiques of 125 top schools, including sections describing the level of political correctness on each campus...
...That Wolfe is now in his seventies only makes his achievement in accuratelypainstakingly—observing and chronicling the lives of American teenagers, the ways they walk, talk, dress, and behave, all the more impressive...
...This slender volume explains the merits of getting an old-fashioned liberal arts education, the sort that most colleges abandoned in the 1960s...
...The Last Lion by William Raymond Manchester...
...Peter Robinson I SEE SATAN FALL LIKE...
...In doing that, he does not live up to the promise of his prior works...
...It's also a shrewd analysis of the enduring mythology surrounding George Washington as a guerrilla warfare general...
...One book which wasn't submitted for National Book Award consideration was Bob Dylan's brilliant Chronicles...
...The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It by Phyllis Schlafir Given all that she's already done to save America, it's amazing that Schlufly is still the intellectual Energizer Bunny, precisely when and where the country needs her...
...The ability of Americans to write great fiction died somewhere around 1950, so it is cause for celebration when an American writer appears who is literContinued on page 46 DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 43 99.1443 54-4968 &Vida...
...Milton Friedman is an economist, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Nobel Laureate in economics, and author of Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose...
...Choosing the Right College by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute...
...She is, after all, the start of the Bethlehem drama...
...This is a bestseller that helped change the course of history by exposing the conduct of John Kerry as a Naval officer in Vietnam and as an antiwar protester...
...2V5 Plus, with each subscription, you get the new ArnSpee 2005 Desk Calendar—our gift to you filled with famous, and infamous, covers of years past...
...There is simply no better resource for seekers...
...fart' book we Oa s a tarigh on...
...My father liked that book and so do I. And because words are powerful and important tools in life, I like to have updated dictionaries on hand...
...Besides these two non-secular books, try a religious offering...
...For that, you will have to read my new book, Good News, Bad News, Evangelization, Conversion, and the Crisis of Faith, coming out this spring from Sophia Institute Press...
...This inspirational book is sure to strengthen your spirit no matter what your faith...
...II BRINGING THE JOBS HOME HI S111.1 ictf THEY (-ANA CHEAT 75-4635 NOW 20' `14 0...11 roNSTITIITIDN AL CHAOS O'REILLY l'ArsAFRICAN For n6.01'1.'141'1...
...Could the organizational genius whose manufacturing triumphs depended on the use of slave labor possibly not have known about the crimes of the Holocaust...
...And she was also an extraordinary teacher/activist...
...He should have learned from Stephen Foster that you can play one melody over and over again and still he a great success—even a genius...
...Read Naomi Schaeffer's God in the Quad (St...
...But the writer I want to pay special homage to is James Taranto...
...My other recommendation is Steve's Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia (W...
...Made into a PBS special (the book is much better), The Question of God leads any objective reader to the realization that Lewis, not Freud, got it right...
...Plus it includes reader responses-from both ends of the political spectrum-to the text...
...RET is The American Spectator's editor in chief, 50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 This new year find out who's being NAUGHTY and who's being NICE...
...www.spectatanorg 1204...
...Or call (800) 524-3469 For more gift cards, free of charge, please call (703) 807-2011 ext 32...
...Her description of "why they hate us" is the best I have heard: They hate us because we are the Prom Queen...
...Here is a Christmas list book for all political junkies...
...election who won the most Palmes D'Ors at Cannes...
...I learned everything I know from Professor Rabkin...
...David Boies, Esq...
...Next, let me suggest Chris Buckley's send-up of Saudi Arabia and of our government's treatments of that repellent place, Florence of Arabia...
...The Age of Napoleon does a good job explaining the French Revolution, then moves briskly along to the rise, unsteady reign, and, with the march on Moscow, insane fall of the Corsican general...
...Our special holiday offer this season—Get 2 subscriptions to The American Spectator for only $59—A savings of $19...
...the rest of us will sit around and howl at Wolfe's comic genius, and wish there were more, or even one other author, like him...
...check sit that apply) J Cash J Crede Card j Check U Money Order How many books have you purchased in the past year...
...Finally, unmask your inner superhero with Neal Adams's Batman Illustrated: Volume II, from DC Comics...
...For a classic, few economists can resist the temptation to name Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS the same year as the Declaration of Independence and just as alive today...
...There is a cast of characters written and described that could come straight out of Al Qaeda or Harnas...
...For her part, Katrina also recommends two books...
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...What a pity...
...This is the book we've all been waiting foil How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) collects Ann Coultersbest writ- ings, including her most provocative and contro- versial columns from the last couple of years...
...JOHN GABLE'S Magnificent (though hard-to-find) anthology, The Man in the Arena: Selected Speeches, Letters & Essays by Theodore Roosevelt, hut almost any collection of Roosevelt's writings and public statements and addresses is a must-have...
...It is useful to test the many answers people give to "What would Jesus do (or think...
...Robert D. Novak UNFIT FOR COMMAND by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi...
...There are dozens of them and most of them work...
...It was the heyday of a unique American political institution that is now sadly in atrophy, and Neal brings out the backstage maneuvers that are better than fiction...
...C. McCloskey III SPENDING A YEAR IN BRITAIN writing a book on evangelization and preparing a television series on Thomas More does give a different perspective on the world from working on K Street within the Beltway...
...He just hasn't read properly his Tocqueville...
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...That's why I'd suggest three of my books in particular, The Art of the Deal, How to Get Rich, and Think Like a Billionaire, because they are full of good advice—advice that is based on experience...
...Unfit for Command by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi: Anyone reading this magazine who has not already read Unfit for Command has hereby earned the title: "Tucker Carlson...
...Pacing, characters, atmosphere, smart-guy dialogue so sharp it makes Raymond Chandler look crude...
...Girard turns the work of Frazer and his students, including Joseph Campbell, upside down...
...Her previous work, Into That Darkness, gave us the life of Franz Stang!, commandant of Treblinka, a man with more than a million deaths on his hands...
...lir Joe Gibbs is the head coach of the Washington Redskins...
...Merry Christmas...
...Milton Friedman HEREWITH A FEW SUGGESTIONS of books for Christmas...
...What is effective is the belief those people have in my will to use the means...
...Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman by Merle Miller...
...With just the right number of charts and graphs, he lays out the case clearly and overwhelmingly: global capitalism lifts the burdens and eases the pains of the world's poorest people...
...I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe...
...It's just that he is a political science professor at Cornell and faculty meetings would have been even more uncomfortable than I imagine they already are if Rabkin had given his book a more fitting title, such as "F--- the French...
...John Updike and Norman Mailer can furrow their brows and wonder whether Wolfe has blessed us with a work of journalism, literary fiction, or mere "entertainment...
...After sifting through a variety of mediocre tomes, I am happy to recommend three standouts...
...before the rest of us did...
...That's their impression...
...He had his flaws, of course, but ultimately one can only be enamored of a man who...
...A college campus was bound to be a feast for Tom, but with elegant prose and hilarious insight, he has evoked every aspect of the place—sounds, smells, ludicrous language, and a certain randy governor...
...Or Stephen K Cohen is a professor of Russian studies and history at New York University and professor emeritus ofpolitics and Russian studies at Princeton University...
...FRENCH BETRAYAL f AMERICA GRAND OLD PARTY 24-3791 80-2735 84-4365 85-0154 igre44 Now 20' 441406 NOW 20' 40284‘ Now 20' 6444 4 wow 20° take a stand for freedom 4.1— prow 20' mow 20' ^^IHIS • I SI IN HISTORY iLLIAM S-IAR1 04.3946 NOW 20' 7ke MQPERN AN PHI._\ICHNCY DAVID BALDACCI HOUR GAMEGA 4ridi 19.2506 94-2874 03-7983 64-9941 55-0757 15-0223 25.0051 49-0'273 NoW HOW 20 mow 2u NOW 20' 6.No...
...In the process, he exposes the GEM, as Alvin Plantinga calls it, the Great Evolutionary Myth...
...Imagine the genetic inheritance of Maria and Arnold's children...
...James Rosen is a Fox News White House corresponden t and author of the forthcoming The Strong Man: John Mitchell, Nixon and Watergate (Doubleday...
...but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose...
...What makes this work a perennial is that Lewis's arguments, if anything, are more compelling today than when he first voiced them on BBC during World War II...
...The Full of the Berlin Wall by William F. Buckley, Jr...
...Washington's Crossing is a harrowing, one-of-a-kind portrayal of Washington, his men, their enemies, and the legacy of the monumental military campaign of 1776 and 1777...
...Note: To order, use subscription cards or send check to: The American Spectator, P.O...
...A big little book 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS that represents a marvelous introduction to the Cold War—and to the prose of a master...
...How could Ayn Rand have understood so much...
...They are also worth reading separate from the other hooks with which they have been historically bound...
...Glenn Reynolds JAMES BENNETT'S The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Wilt Lead the Way in the Tiventy-First Century (Rowman Littlefield, 2004...
...BILLA1 •2=rm f...
...40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS For everyone, I recommend giving the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
...Yeah, we're bad: We have every kind of cheese...
...how he lived and died and was reborn, that is the heart of the faith that changed the world...
...The American Spectator will always let you know with our clear, crisp, and informed writing, plus our trademark irreverent humor...
...When unemployed and excluded Third Worlders march on their capitals waving this "little blue book of capitalism," they will finally be able to enjoy the rising living standards that capitalism has brought to the West...
...His essay on leadership is very good but, more importantly, let me state it here: he is the most original journalistic voice of his generation, as can be seen daily on his "Best of the Web Today" at the Wall Street Journals OpinionJournal.com...
...Getting more personal, after having walked the streets of London and its outlying districts tracing the footsteps of the greatest Englishman of the last 500 years (pace Winston Churchill), St...
...He writes a terrific part-history, part-sociology, part-autobiography book on the most neglected ethnic group...
...Witness by Whittaker Chambers...
...and as evidence that such long and principled independence can result not only in the oldest continuously published political magazine but in its most widely subscribed one today...
...entered and fought World War I as the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time...
...As a Midwest-bred Catholic, I was raised to celebrate the Virgin Mother (Mary) over the Christmas season...
...NOW 20` The Middle East expel and biblical scholar traces the efforts of American Christians to help establish a Jewish State...
...caSle) 8 &el to sad en:er 14u1 *refs have 10 days tn decde 11 you ye taro-anted *is tease yes Monte Re* kern cane kite...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Neither will their good friends the Germans...
...What, however, he does not see nor understand is its new dawn in the decades ahead...
...It is absolute...
...Peter Robinson is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the recent book, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life (Regan Books...
...Steve recommends the Memoirs of Mikhail Gorbachev (Doubleday, 1996) for two reasons: as a reminder that the exceedingly rare political heretics necessary for historical progress can emerge even from the most improbable source, in this case the Soviet nomenklatura system...
...Well-written and witty, it can be read either as a description of how the right repeatedly tricks Kansans into voting against their interests,or as the triumph of ideals over self-interest, or both...
...An Austrian native who witnessed Hitler's speech at the 1934 Nuremberg rally—the subject of Leni Riefenstahl's epic propaganda film Triumph of the Will—Sereny later became one of the leading chroniclers of the Third Reich...
...with a recently fired assassin's bullet still lodged in his chest, takes to the stage in his bloodied shirt and announces: "Friends, I shall ask of you to be as quiet as possible...
...As a judge for the National Book Award, 1 was in the difficult position of whittling 200 entries down to five...
...Hazelton allows the reader to see Mary as poor villager, sage woman, and medicinal healer...
...With deft precision, David Hackett Fischer interweaves the history of Emmanuel Leutz's popular painting with the strategic realities of Washington's military maneuvers...
...everything Olson writes is important and infuriating...
...This is nothing more nor less than a highly readable version of the very popular course which Dr...
...the reader can be in no doubt...
...Therefore I am deadly...
...by Thomas Frank...
...is managing partner ofBoies, Schiller and Flexner...
...Because He Could by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: Another terrific book by the one man who survived working for Clinton (and the woman who saved him...
...Published posthumously this year, it is a rollicking account by the late Chicago Sun-Times political reporter of the 1932 Democratic National Convention in Chicago that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...Set at a major modern university, I Am Charlotte Simmons chronicles in unsparing detail the complete collapse of civility among monied white youths, and their consuming obsessions with sex and status...
...Fifty years after her novels were published, Ayn Rand is still the biggest-selling libertarian author around...
...In the same spirit, our 13-year old daughter, Nika Cohen, strongly recommends for her generation the novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold [Little, Brown], the story of a family struggling to deal with the death of a daughter, as told by the dead girl herself...
...No holiday book list compiled by me would be complete without this masterpiece that exerted a profinind impact on so many lives, including mine...
...Charles W. Colson THE FOLLOWING ARE SOME of the books I'd recommend this Christmas: The Question of God by Armand Nicholi...
...the Prophet by Serge Trifkovic (Regina Orthodox Prophet...
...missionary folly now CHRISTMAS under way in Iraq had an equally self-defeating, if less murderous, predecessor in the 1990s...
...Evans EACH BOOK ON MY LIST has taught me about myself, inspired me, and given me the courage of my convictions...
...My favorite lawyer and adviser to the Bait Shop Junta, Ted Olson, writes scintillatingly on William Howard Taft...
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...Donald L. Evans is the Secretary of Commerce...
...Lindbergh, a Hitler-loving nitwit, whose ability to pilot an airplane catapulted him into the White House, slowly edged the country towards being a Fascist state...
...Donald I...
...Speer was the lone major figure in Hitler's inner circle to work actively against the Ffihrer's scorched earthpolicy at the close of World War II, and the only Nuremberg defendant to show even a hint of remorse for the atrocities of the Third Reich...
...A gift for older teens...
...DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 41 BOOKS FOR Stephen Cohen 80 Katrina vanden Heuvel THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR invited US separately to contribute to its - -- Christmas Book Issue, possibly I not knowing we are husband and wife, but, in an expression of our family values in this election year, we are responding jointly...
...The thesis of The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin) is that Charles Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election...
...The University of Washington sociologist takes a keen, critical look at Christian influence on society and comes to some startling conclusions...
...JOHN PAUL H RISE, LET US 13F ON OUR WAY Li (0t Bus, 'mt...
...It could have been subtitled "The Last Real Catholic Democrat...
...The book is also, incidentally, and unintentionally, a tribute to the Russians who had the good sense to send a monkey, rather than a man, on the landmark Sputnik flight that was likened to Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic...
...I would also recommend Surge (Smithsonian Books) by Scott Stossel...
...Ever since the 1890 publication of Frazer's The Golden Bough, it has been fashionable to view Christianity as one more myth passed down to us from the ancient world...
...My own personal choice is The Daily Walk Bible from the Walk Thru the Bible series (Tyndale...
...Huntington asks all the right questions about the future course of our country and even gives some of the right answers...
...A monumental study of a great American dissenter and his times, virtually the entire 20th century, it is a fitting tribute to a man who consistently, eloquently, and boldly argued on behalf of alternative understandings and policies and who brought to the American liberal tradition deep conviction, fierce intelligence, and piercing wit...
...Perhaps it speaks to the quality of the book that both sides of the Iraq issue consider the book as being supportive of their own position...
...rem them at our anew ad wet credrt fur azoirt hel YR Jim Ms a worn JoRArnencanConoass sun...
...Douglas Brinkley MUCH OF MY 2004 WAS SPENT reading—and scanning over—hundreds of recently published nonfiction books...
...It's that little bit extra—a military capable of defending the nation—that makes you a true Hegemon in the world...
...Bush...
...Imbued with rigorous research...
...For that, read The Sword qt...
...Of recent books, two stand out: Bill Buckley's delightful memoir, Miles Gone By, a resurrection of pieces published during more than half a century...
...Since it was featured for many years by the Book of the Month Club, you'll find copies of The Story of Civilization, which the Durants composed during the middle of the last century, in every used bookstore in the country—as I write, all nine books in the series are available on eBay for sale as a single lot for $9.99...
...And finally, read the most cogent sociological analysis of American Catholicism, The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church (Sophia Institute Press) by David Carlin...
...In two books, Restoring the Lost Constitution and The Structure of Liberty, law professor Randy Barnett has done something important: he has clearly and thoroughly connected the philosophy of liberty and limited government to the particulars of the Constitution and case law to give us a genuine jurisprudence of liberty...
...Further, one can find an eerie similarity of language between those who are opposed to American intervention in Iraq and the "America-Firsters" of 1940 who tried to prevent America from becoming involved in the Second World War and, in fact, actually succeeded in so doing until Japan attacked on December 7, 1941, and Hitler declared war on us rather than vice versa on December 11...
...Know thy enemy...
...r Donald J. Trump is president and CEO of The Trump Organization and host of The Apprentice...
...Third is For the Glory ofGodby Rodney Stark...
...During this holiday season, I hope you have the opportunity to partake of this gift by discovering great books to inspire you in the coming year...
...Which brings me to my annual favorite, Mere Christianity...
...This explains a lot about the Democrats' policy proposals...
...One book which I found especially superb was Washington's Crossing, an historiographically balanced account of a pivotal turning point in the Revolutionary War...
...Having said all that, one must be thankful for small morsels in a time of famine and so the novel is still a joy to read...
...Rill Sammon IVITO TWO OF MY TEENAGERS in College and three more not far behind, of% • I've been reading a lot about higher education lately...
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...This is heavy reading, especially for non-lawyers, but it's a good standard by which to measure the legal philosophy of Supreme Court candidates...
...Decadent Europe has very few private universities and even fewer with a religious orientation...
...As for literary biographies, I enjoyed Charles C. Calhoun's informative Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life and Robert K. Landers's definitive An Honest Writer: The Life and Times of James T Farrell...
...RECKLESS DISREGARD • THE THIRD TERRORIST !AMA OaNti 95-0049 Ips•+.0tO NOW 20' Tli I MA FACES 10I-LN KER BASIC ECONOMICS 89-3105 sires NOW 20' 63-8276 HOW 20' Now 20' How 20' tto• I Imam...
...W. Norton, 2001, updated paperback edition), as a blistering reminder that the US...
...One of our greatest gifts is the gift of knowledge...
...Inspired by the editor's assurance that there is "no need to be pinched by self-effacement," and with those same family values in mind, our recommendations include a book by the other...
...David Boles FOR LIBERALS STILL MYSTIFIED by George Bush's re-election, I recommend giving What's the Matter With Kansas...
...Harvey Mansfield and Paul Gigot are memorable on their subjects, Ronald Reagan and George I, respectively...
...from his prime period between 1968 and 1976...
...So buy Lesley Hazelton's fine Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother...
...I begin and end my day reading the Scriptures and studying God's Word...
...Yet, most readers don't know much about the historical Mary...
...t is the best one-volume introduction and overview of the Patron Saint of Statesman and Politicians...
...Published last year, this is an invaluable account of how the U.S...
...Whose thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction...
...They actually believe there is no contradiction between faith and reason and that it is possible to be both virtuous and a college student...
...94-3160 44119d.N...
...Raoul Lionel Felder I MODESTLY RECOMMF.ND Bare Knuckle Negotiation, written by , — , myself (John Wiley & Sons...
...Fleming, a prolific and unconventional historian, describes how Woodrow Wilson's quest for global democracy led America into a brief yet extraordinarily bloody combat when in fact real American neutrality could have forced a negotiated settlement in 1916 and averted much of the global mayhem that followed...
...John Stossel THE BEST CHOICE, OF COURSE, is my book, Give Me a Break, although it's written more for those who watch TV than read The American Spectator...
...She's a magnificent writer, despite the fact that she graduated top in her class from Columbia Journalism School and has written for the New York Times...
...The Age of Napoleon, the last of nine volumes in The Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant...
...I have read Witness in its entirety five times and dipped into it countless times, always discovering something new...
...The book increased my knowledge of radical Islam by 90 percent...
...The first is the forthcoming and long-awaited biography of John Kenneth Galbraith by Richard Parker (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005...
...Jack H. McCall, Jr.'s Pogiebairs War: A Sons Quest for His Father's Wartime Life...
...pursuit and civilized my prose, Robert H. Ferrell, is there with a fine essay on Herbert Hoover...
...It is, all in one, a memoir, spy story, and account of the epochal struggle between Communism and freedom, between those who accept and those who reject God...
...Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World...
...John Stossel is an ABC News correspondent and co-anchor of 20/20...
...The Illusion of Victory by Thomas Fleming...
...42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2004/JANUARY 2005 BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS The Case for Sovereignty by Jeremy Rabkin: Don't be fooled by the boring academic title...
...I also think Norman Vincent Peale's classic, The Power of Positive Thinking, is valid and helpful to people of all ages...
...Adams revolutionized both the process and product of comic books, effecting a quantum leap over the windowpane layout and stocky, expressionless oafs that defined the three preceding decades of comic book art...
...Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo...
...Christianity does indeed share the same underlying structure as many myths, Girard argues, yet it remains radically different and utterly apart, the only ancient story to show us that the subject of the ritual murder is utterly innocent...
...In this bizarre and hilarious travelogue, Burkett describes her t ravels to the Axis of Evil and beyond in the year following the 9/11 attack...
...The main point of Rabkin's book (at least up to Chapter 3) is that you cannot be a "Superpower" if you hate and fear weapons...
...A lot of new words enter our language every year, and it's a good way to keep up with them...
...Read it...
...With his peerless command of anatomy, realism, perspective, and layout...
...The professor who walks around with an India-rubber ball in his trouser pocket that he practices using a detonator for explosives carried in his person: "I have the means to make myself deadly, but that by itself, you understand, is absolutely nothing in the way of protection...
...After an extraordinary introduction on the very purpose of higher education, Henrie recommends a do-it-yourself core that students can cobble together by taking one elective in each of eight semesters...
...An astonishing exercise in anthropology, literary investigation, and faith...
...INDICATE SELECTIONS HERE: SAVE MORE ROM Send Ire a Pith book Mr led neence rnycceirmbeent lo only IA 3 beaks LH mean added $5.98 -"'N plus shipprig arcl Kona% Do you have a leiephone...
...that provide faith-based liberal arts education...
...I would also recommend James Webb, novelist, former Secretary of the Navy, and war hero's book Born Fighting (Broadway Books...
...COP13411PT-01 020AC cot.u41 Auk 12/1/04 YES'Please enroll me as a member of American Compass according to the risk-free membership plan described in this ad and send me the 5 books indicated by the numbers I have filled in below...
...So Many Enemies, So Little Time by Elinor Burkett: Like so many these days, Elinor is a recovering liberal, just past the denial stage...
...Skip the boring digressions on German literature and philosophy and you'll find yourself enjoying this relic of a time when middlebrow American life was remarkably highbrow...
...Now 4iiioa Now 20' 84-3151 46:iiew Now 20' 84-4092 44244 NOW 20' Read, decide, react...
...mt...
...Soldier, historian, conservationist, explorer, president, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and a founder of the NCAA, Roosevelt passionately loved this country and was the very embodiment of vitality, self-reliance, and mental and physical tenacity...
...LET MESUGGEST THREE...
...They are a welcome alternative to both public and elitist valueless mega-universities...
...And until we can talk to the French Superpower to Superpower, no one in America cares what they think about the Dixie Chicks or anything else...
...Pr Charles W. Colson is chairman of Prison Fellowship Ministries in Washington, D.C...
...LIGHTNING by Rene Girard...
...Finally, let me do justice to a book we should have reviewed months ago...
...Whatever significance one gives to earlier and later writings, it is the Gospels' report of what Jesus actually said and did...
...He makes the refreshing, and for elites, shocking argument that Christianity is actually good for society...
...The professor who presided over my Ph.D...
...Contrary to claims by Democratic politicians and liberal journalists (nearly all of whom have not read the book) that it is a pack of lies, it is meticulously researched and utterly convincing...
...Box 30508, Salt Lake City, UT 84130-9921...
...lir David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and author of Libertarianism: A Primer...
...All life is a negotiation, often starting in the morning, negotiating the petty things involving the way the day will play out, then a new set of negotiations on new subjects carried over into the workplace, and the final day's negotiation often ending up in the bedroom...
...The mercurial Dylan's storytelling about growing up in Minnesota's North Country and coming-of-age in Greenwich Village's Folk Clubs is flawless...
...For libertarians, I recommend Defending the Undefendable by Walter Block, the Libertarian Reader by David Boaz, In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government by Charles Murray, and, of course, Atlas Shrugged...
...The Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin...
...Martin's Press) for a concise on-the-spot examination of several small and not-so small religious universities and colleges in the U.S...
...I agree to buy 4 more books within the next 2 years...
...Like a virus, anti-Semitism first appeared in the minuscule details of everyday life, and then, in almost imperceptible increments, spread, until it finally engulfed the psyche of a willingly susceptible and perniciously hate-prone American public...
...And who proclaims, "Madness and despair...
...and Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton...
...Buy a 6th book rox for rust 55.95...
...Woody Guthrie, and Neville Brothers albums...
...ir Bill Sammon is the Washington Times' senior White House correspondent and author of Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry, and the Bush Haters...
...He describes the events that led to the birth of the Nation of Israel in 1948, and shows how hatred in the Arab world for Amenca is linked to our identification with Israel...
...While liberals set to work looking for more Anita Hills to deploy against President Bush's possible Supreme Court nominees, conservatives should be memorizing this highly readable and important book...
...I get a new one every year...
...This is the best nonfiction book I have ever read, on any subject...
...It is a superb collection of essays on American presidents by some splendid taxonomists...
...BOIL 61 52...
...mg and taming (pis sacs tax...
...The Wake-Up, the newest crime novel by Robert Ferrigno...
...Inasmuch as Morris was the evil genius behind the decadent buffoon, it is a testament to what great fun Morris's books are that we haven't deported him...
...This second installment in the planned three-volume set of deluxe hardcover slipcase editions continues collecting all of the master's work on various Batman titles (Detective Comics, Batman, Brave and the Bold, Worldk Finest, etc...
...Parents of college students will find themselves reading through parted fingers this unflinching account of Ivy Leaguers obsessed with sex, beer, and athletes...
...Joe Gibbs ..--MY BOOK SUGGESTION is The Bible...
...Not a word out of place...
...James Rosen sr.‘ • -- no better holiday gift than Tom fearless reportage, there can be Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons...
...fir Father C J. McCloskey III is a research fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, D.C...
...More than increased defense spending will be necessary to defend ourselves...
...David 13 () a z JOHAN NORBERG IS A YOUNG Swedish writer who calls himself a former anarchist and has written In Defense of Global Capitalism, a devastating rebuttal to the incoherent arguments of the anti-globalizers...
...The kit motifof the novel is how, incrementally, Jews fell victims to Lindbergh's pro-Nazi sympathies...
...Roth's strength is also in capturing the dialogue and the music behind the dialogue in his observations and the utterances he places in the mouths of the major public figures of the day...
...Kw selections re sent ID you intintay To wird shernort—nr to otter COO books—sof rerun you Mertes Rs* Form by the marked date or log rat to our Web stra...
...For myself, I'm just hoping someone will give me Tom Wolfe's latest sprawling novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons...
...plumbing its depths of evil through her searingly personal interview style and meticulous research methods...
...Katrina vanden Heuvel has been the editor of The Nation since 1995...
...Nicholi has been teaching at Harvard for the past 25 years...
...The book is chock full of anecdotes and my experiences in an infelicitous lifetime undertaking...
...AMERICAN COMVISS , The Conservative Aftemative Is America on course...
...In just under 200 pages, Buckley tells the story of the Berlin Wall, from its erection by soldiers in 1961 to its demolition by ordinary Germans wielding hammers, chisels, and crowbars in 1989...
...and as a warning that we are perilously close to losing the opportunities Gorbachev gave us (with some help from President Reagan and the first George Bush) for a safer, post-Cold War world...
Vol. 37 • December 2004 • No. 10
