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...
...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...
...Argues that the punishment of crime must be understood and upheld as a basic obligation of society...
...Martin's Press, 1975...
...second, read de Tocqueville on Democracy in America three times...
...Heavy guns—moral, logical, and rhetorical—boom and what is left of J .S...
...The First Liberty: A History of the Right to Vote in America, 1619-1850, by Marchette Chute (Dutton, 1969...
...The best suspense-crime novel I've read in years...
...Don't expect ever to see a better book on the creation of the Republic than Gordon Wood's...
...The title, a splendid one, suffices to indicate the importance of the subject...
...New York Times "Excellent...Greatly superior to the existing literature on ethnicity and organized crime...
...22.50...
...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...
...Palmer (Princeton University Press, 1969...
...James Q. Wilson Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, Harvard University...
...Charles S. Hyneman Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Indiana University...
...I pale at the thought that I might have died without having read it...
...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...
...Execution Eve, by William F. Buckley, Jr...
...Liberal Parents, Radical Children, by Midge Decter (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, $7.95...
...Freedom and Reform, by Frank H. Knight (reprint of 1947 edition, Kennicat, $12.50...
...systematic revelation of the nonlogical basis of social organization...
...My five book reading suggestions would be as follows: First, read the Federalist Papers twice...
...Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo (Vintage, paper, $1.95...
...Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick (Basic Books, $12.95...
...The Structure of Science, by Ernest Nagel (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $12.95...
...A novel of still underestimated literary and psychological value...
...Just read it again...
...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...
...10...
...Sidney Hook Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, New York University...
...The Cannon edition is best but the most readily available are the Modern Library Giant edition ($4.95) and the Penguin edition ($2.95...
...First published in 1864 (La Cite Antique), now in paperback as a Doubleday Anchor Book, $2.50...
...Author of Execution Eve, God and Man at Yale, The Unmaking of a Mayor...
...of California Press, $14.95, paper $6.95...
...15 cloth, $3.45 paper...
...Author of City Politics (with Edward C. Banfield), Political Organizations, Thinking about Crime...
...The Victorian lore supplied may be BASIC BOOKS to EAST 53RD ST 'NEW YORK 10022 THE MAFIA MYSTIQUE by Dwight C. Smith, Jr...
...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...
...Lecturer in Psychology and Sociology, New School for Social Research...
...12.95—read it and see...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton (Alfred A. Knopf, $7.95...
...The title, a splendid one, suffices to indicate the importance of the subject...
...Heavy guns—moral, logical, and rhetorical—boom and what is left of J .S...
...Ernest van den Haag Professor of Social Philosophy at New York University...
...I suggest the Bible—which, if you cannot get it through regular commercial outlets, is readily available in most hotels...
...8.95...
...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...
...We offer here gift suggestions from some of the writers whose books would top our own list of recommendations...
...A magnificent articulation of the contemporary naturalistic outlook in philosophy...
...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...
...First published in 1864 (La Cite Antique), now in paperback as a Doubleday Anchor Book, $2.50...
...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...
...The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn (Harvard University Press, $9.50...
...One of the wisest books on the nature, limits, and possibilities of human experience...
...Every time I dip into this book I wonder if I may not be guilty of near-plagiarism...
...Dicey, 2d edition (1914), Macmillan, no longer in print...
...The Bible of criminology...
...Edward C. Banfield Kenan Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, University of Pennsylvania...
...Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution...
...Author of Capitalism and Freedom, Essays in Positive Economics...
...Three-volume boxed set: $38.95 PUNISHING CRIMINALS by Ernest Van Den Haag...
...One of the wisest books on the nature, limits, and possibilities of human experience...
...I'll go along...
...We offer here gift suggestions from some of the writers whose books would top our own list of recommendations...
...Just published 515.00 CRIME AND JUSTICE edited by Sir Leon Radzinowick t Marvin E. Wolfgang...
...William F. Buckley, Jr...
...On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill, by Gertrude Himmelfarb (Alfred A. Knopf, $8.95...
...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...
...That totals five books...
...second, read de Tocqueville on Democracy in America three times...
...Every time I dip into this book I wonder if I may not be guilty of near-plagiarism...
...Any reason offered here would be irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent...
...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...
...Milton Friedman Paul S. Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago...
...Author of Hero in History, The Paradoxes of Freedom, Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life...
...Author of Capitalism and Freedom, Essays in Positive Economics...
...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...
...Mann's whole work is concerned with the tension of Western civilization...
...Experience and Nature, by John Dewey...
...Still one of the most readable and entertaining among the influential unread books of all time...
...The Cannon edition is best but the most readily available are the Modern Library Giant edition ($4.95) and the Penguin edition ($2.95...
...Ernest van den Haag Professor of Social Philosophy at New York University...
...Author of Execution Eve, God and Man at Yale, The Unmaking of a Mayor...
...The Everlasting Man...
...Somebody said somewhere it's the most important book of our time...
...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...
...you will have to look for it in second-hand bookstores...
...Argues that the punishment of crime must be understood and upheld as a basic obligation of society...
...Should be read by everyone with a serious interest In books about organized crime...
...Editor, National Review...
...Author of The Jewish Mystique, Punishing Criminals...
...James Q. Wilson Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, Harvard University...
...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...
...The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth (Bantam, $1.95)—in case you haven't...
...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...
...Dicey, 2d edition (1914), Macmillan, no longer in print...
...The most powerful and persuasive case for the democratic way of life...
...26 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 197...
...Experience and Nature, by John Dewey...
...it's still believable and absorbing...
...The Pound Era, by Hugh Kenner (Univ...
...Edward C. Banfield Kenan Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, University of Pennsylvania...
...Chesterton...
...systematic revelation of the nonlogical basis of social organization...
...The vision that should guide the reform and reconstruction of America...
...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 Popular Government in America (with Charles E. Gilbert), The Supreme Court on Trial...
...My five book reading suggestions would be as follows: First, read the Federalist Papers twice...
...The Bible of criminology...
...On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill, by Gertrude Himmelfarb (Alfred A. Knopf, $8.95...
...I read it for the first time this summer, by accident...
...Sidney Hook Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, New York University...
...The Ancient City, by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges...
...The best suspense-crime novel I've read in years...
...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...
...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 Age of the Democratic Revolution, Volume I: The Challenge, by R.R...
...The Gulag Archipelago, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Harper and Row, $12.50, paper $1.95...
...Author of The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, Politics, Planning and the Public Interest (with Martin Meyerson), The Unheavenly City Revisited...
...Editor, National Review...
...Mill's essay On Liberty is hardly worth sweeping up...
...I know of no better Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Ambassador to the United Nations...
...An exhilarating experience...
...it remains only to add that rarely has the decline of representative government been set down with such eloquence and documentation...
...Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville...
...8.95...
...Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century, by A.V...
...That totals five books...
...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...
...Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century, by A.V...
...An exhilarating experience...
...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...
...Charles S. Hyneman Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Indiana University...
...Again, don't put it off...
...Author of The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, Beyond the Melting Pot (with Nathan Glazer...
...15.95...
...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 book is brilliant in its insights and warm and compassionate in tone...
...Robert Nisbet Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities, Columbia University...
...Fred Graham, The New York Times...
...paperback edition $3.50...
...Perhaps too clever by half, but fun also for many other reasons, and illuminating...
...The Age of the Democratic Revolution, Volume I: The Challenge, by R.R...
...The Life of Reason, by George Santa-yana...
...We Learned to Ski, by Harold Evans, Brian Jackman, and Mark Ottaway...
...Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville...
...Just read it again...
...Liberal Parents, Radical Children, by Midge Decter (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, $7.95...
...Author of The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, Beyond the Melting Pot (with Nathan Glazer...
...We Learned to Ski, by Harold Evans, Brian Jackman, and Mark Ottaway...
...The Frontiersman, by Allan W. Eckert (Little-Brown, 1967...
...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...
...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...
...Putnam, $9.95...
...Democracy and Education, by John Dewey (Free Press, paperback, $2.75...
...Democracy and Education, by John Dewey (Free Press, paperback, $2.75...
...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...
...Life insurance companies should double their premiums to clients who have not read it...
...15.95...
...Due November 1975 512.95 Illustrated The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 25 diagnosis of our present major problem...
...The Life of Reason, by George Santa-yana...
...The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith...
...if charged, I would plead extenuating circumstances: how could one read this book and not be deeply influenced by it...
...The Victorian lore supplied may be BASIC BOOKS to EAST 53RD ST 'NEW YORK 10022 THE MAFIA MYSTIQUE by Dwight C. Smith, Jr...
...10...
...Paperback by Norton, $3.45...
...it remains only to add that rarely has the decline of representative government been set down with such eloquence and documentation...
...An inspiring expression of the human spirit...
...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...
...Any reason offered here would be irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent...
...Paperback by Norton, $3.45...
...Palmer (Princeton University Press, 1969...
...An informative and critical exposition of scientific method by one of the keenest minds of our time...
...Fred Graham, The New York Times...
...Perhaps too clever by half, but fun also for many other reasons, and illuminating...
...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...
...Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick (Basic Books, $12.95...
...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...
...of California Press, $14.95, paper $6.95...
...Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo (Vintage, paper, $1.95...
...A novel of still underestimated literary and psychological value...
...26 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 197...
...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...
...An inspiring expression of the human spirit...
...Author of The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, Politics, Planning and the Public Interest (with Martin Meyerson), The Unheavenly City Revisited...
...Robert Nisbet Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities, Columbia University...
...Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, by James Fitzjames Stephen, first published in 1873...
...A fascinating analysis of the American pamphlet literature preceding the revolution...
...15 cloth, $3.45 paper...
...Somebody said somewhere it's the most important book of our time...
...The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, edited by Oscar and Mary Handlin (Harvard University Press, 1966...
...Again, don't put it off...
...We offe...
...The text is an insightful discussion of why collectivism triumphed despite the great success of laissez-faire...
...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...
...Execution Eve, by William F. Buckley, Jr...
...it's still believable and absorbing...
...John Cammett, Dean of Faculty, John Jay College...
...Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, by James Fitzjames Stephen, first published in 1873...
...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...
...A fascinating, even exciting, insight into Mill, and a wonderfully illuminating account of what went wrong with modern liberalism...
...Chesterton...
...paperback edition $3.50...
...22.50...
...Author of City Politics (with Edward C. Banfield), Political Organizations, Thinking about Crime...
...The Gulag Archipelago, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Harper and Row, $12.50, paper $1.95...
...William F. Buckley, Jr...
...Milton Friedman Paul S. Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago...
...The Frontiersman, by Allan W. Eckert (Little-Brown, 1967...
...Still one of the most readable and entertaining among the influential unread books of all time...
...12.95—read it and see...
...A fascinating, even exciting, insight into Mill, and a wonderfully illuminating account of what went wrong with modern liberalism...
...Putnam, $9.95...
...if charged, I would plead extenuating circumstances: how could one read this book and not be deeply influenced by it...
...John Cammett, Dean of Faculty, John Jay College...
...The Pound Era, by Hugh Kenner (Univ...
...New York Times "Excellent...Greatly superior to the existing literature on ethnicity and organized crime...
...The Ancient City, by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges...
...you will have to look for it in second-hand bookstores...
...The vision that should guide the reform and reconstruction of America...
...The Everlasting Man...
...I'll go along...
...A fascinating analysis of the American pamphlet literature preceding the revolution...
...I know of no better Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Ambassador to the United Nations...
...The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton (Alfred A. Knopf, $7.95...
...Restores perspective to the ideology versus interests explanations of the origins of the revolution...
...The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, edited by Oscar and Mary Handlin (Harvard University Press, 1966...
...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...
...The book is brilliant in its insights and warm and compassionate in tone...
...An informative and critical exposition of scientific method by one of the keenest minds of our time...
...The text is an insightful discussion of why collectivism triumphed despite the great success of laissez-faire...
...republished (in 1967) by the Cambridge University Press together with an important preface to the second edition in which Stephen replied to critics...
...The First Liberty: A History of the Right to Vote in America, 1619-1850, by Marchette Chute (Dutton, 1969...
...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 Rise of Guardian Democracy: The Supreme Court's Role in Voting Rights Disputes, 1845-1969, by Ward Y. Elliott (Harvard University Press, $15.00...
...I read it for the first time this summer, by accident...
...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...
...Just published 515.00 CRIME AND JUSTICE edited by Sir Leon Radzinowick t Marvin E. Wolfgang...
...Mill's essay On Liberty is hardly worth sweeping up...
...republished (in 1967) by the Cambridge University Press together with an important preface to the second edition in which Stephen replied to critics...
...Three-volume boxed set: $38.95 PUNISHING CRIMINALS by Ernest Van Den Haag...
...A magnificent articulation of the contemporary naturalistic outlook in philosophy...
...Faustus, by Thomas Mann...
...Author of The Jewish Mystique, Punishing Criminals...
...The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth (Bantam, $1.95)—in case you haven't...
...I suggest the Bible—which, if you cannot get it through regular commercial outlets, is readily available in most hotels...
...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...
...Liberal Parents, Radical Children, by Midge Decter (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, $7.95...
...Faustus, by Thomas Mann...
...The most powerful and persuasive case for the democratic way of life...
...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...
...Moby Dick...
...Author of Popular Government in America (with Charles E. Gilbert), The Supreme Court on Trial...
...Life insurance companies should double their premiums to clients who have not read it...
...Author of The Quest for Community, Social Change and History, The Twilight of Authority...
...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...
...I pale at the thought that I might have died without having read it...
...Due November 1975 512.95 Illustrated The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 25 diagnosis of our present major problem...
...Author of The Quest for Community, Social Change and History, The Twilight of Authority...
...Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution...
...Martin's Press, 1975...
...Lecturer in Psychology and Sociology, New School for Social Research...
...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...
...This is its culmination...
...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...
...The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith...
...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...
...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 Hero in History, The Paradoxes of Freedom, Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life...
...Restores perspective to the ideology versus interests explanations of the origins of the revolution...
...The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn (Harvard University Press, $9.50...
...The Structure of Science, by Ernest Nagel (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $12.95...
...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...
...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...
...This is its culmination...
...Moby Dick...
...Mann's whole work is concerned with the tension of Western civilization...
Vol. 9 • December 1975 • No. 3
