Posted on July 22nd, 2011 by John Payne
I have a new article in Reason where I review two books on the great empires of history and explain that imperialism does not make the conquering nations any richer or safer. Moreover, decentralized societies are safer than consolidated empires because would-be conquerors cannot take existing administrative systems and technologies and use them for their own ends. [...]
Filed under: Books, Decentralism, Foreign policy, History, Ideas, War
Posted on July 20th, 2011 by Lewis McCrary
A great amenity of the dying bookstore megachains is the square footage devoted to magazines; the typical Borders or Barnes and Noble stocks hundreds of titles, including a whole range of glossy gossip rags, more high-minded literary titles, and hobbyist periodicals. With many small independent bookstores choosing not to carry periodicals and traditional newsstands now [...]
Filed under: Books, media
Posted on July 20th, 2011 by Ben Dunant
Will the East dominate the West by the end of this century? Absolutely, says Stanford professor of classics and history Ian Morris; and there is little the West can hope to do about it. In a talk hosted by the New America Foundation and the Atlantic Council in Washington – “Will the East dominate the [...]
Filed under: Books, Economics, History, World
Posted on July 13th, 2011 by Ben Dunant
The tireless Richard Dawkins continues to lay the foundations for his immanent atheist caliphate. In bookstores this October shall arrive his latest offering, a graphic science textbook called The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True, with illustrations by Dave McKean. This is ostensibly a book for “curious readers of all ages.” But [...]
Filed under: Books, Religion
Posted on June 21st, 2011 by John Payne
Sometimes an article comes along that is so blindingly stupid and misinformed that the mind reels in a vain attempt to understand how such a thing could be published by any semi-reputable organization. In my personal experience, these articles often discuss the history of the libertarian movement or libertarian ideas. I’m certainly not contending that [...]
Filed under: Books, Economics, History, Ideas, libertarianism
Posted on June 15th, 2011 by Daniel McCarthy
Hitler was not Tacitus’s fault.
Filed under: Books
Posted on April 26th, 2011 by Lewis McCrary
In the 2009 film Up in the Air, George Clooney plays a traveling businessman on the road so many days a year that he finds peace in the transit hubs most of us experience as a kind of dull purgatory — airports, frequent flyer clubs, and runway-adjacent hotels. Striding into the chaotic, noisy terminal he tells [...]
Filed under: Books, Culture, Transportation, World
Posted on January 24th, 2011 by David Franke
The world as revealed to me last week: Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder Snyder is a Yale historian of the Holocaust and East Europe. Yesterday I saw this C-SPAN2 Book TV taping of his speech on his new book at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City. What an [...]
Filed under: Books, Politics, War, World
Posted on December 3rd, 2010 by Joseph Sobran
Courtesy of the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, a classic column from the late Joseph Sobran. See Kevin Lynch’s reminiscence of Sobran here. How do you get to first base with the ladies? It may be easy if you’re as dashing and dynamic as my old friend Taki. He is still handsome, athletic, fearless, and funny after [...]
Filed under: Books, Culture
Posted on December 1st, 2010 by Paul Gottfried
A longtime friend of mine, the former chairman of the political science department at the University of Illinois, Robert Weissberg, has published a devastating book on the educational industry. In Bad Students, Not Bad Schools (Transaction Publishers, 2010), Weissberg takes apart so many misconceptions about mass education that the reader’s head may be spinning by [...]
Filed under: Books, Education
