A collection of 139 posts
A review of World in Danger: Germany and Europe in an Uncertain Time by Wolfgang Ischinger, Brookings, 280 pages (November, 2020) Every winter in Bavaria, the great and the good from Europe and the United States gather to take stock of the threats facing the world. The Munich Security Conference
I anticipated a more thoughtful exploration of Christopher Hitchens’s political history and relevance than what Ben Burgis provided.
Wooldridge argues that meritocracy can only survive if it is infused with an ethos that prioritizes virtue, applying talent to ends that ennoble rather than enrich.
The recording sessions appear harmonious, and although they only have five songs that they are confident enough to play on a cold rooftop in January, the gig above their Apple office—the laziest possible location—goes without a hitch.
A review of High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism by David S. Wills. Beatdom Books, 555 pages. (November 2021) I. In High White Notes, his riveting new biography of Hunter S. Thompson, journalist David S. Wills describes Thompson as America’s first rock star reporter and
A Review of Deliberately Divided: Inside the Controversial Study of Twins and Triplets Adopted Apart by Nancy L. Segal. Rowman & Littlefield, 520 pages (November, 2021) When I first heard about the Louise Wise Services-Child Development Center (LWS-CDC) twin study, I was shocked but also skeptical. A doctor had separated
How will dropping to one’s knees and admitting one’s privilege end the mass incarceration of black Americans caused by the disastrous failure of the War on Drugs?
A review of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy by Batya Ungar-Sargon. Encounter, 312 pages. (October 2021) In Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek (where, full disclosure, she has published two of my essays), argues that elite left-wing
The truth is we can never hope for a perfect alignment between moral desert and material reward because we each have competing definitions of what constitutes merit.
Five decades after its release, Wake in Fright remains a brutally captivating reminder that modernity is just a thin veneer over the darker recesses of the human heart.
The decision to withdraw from Afghanistan returns those nations willing to fight evil to their couches, where they can sigh in safety.
Woolf’s depiction of these inner rhythms would be refined in the novels that followed—To the Lighthouse and The Waves—but Dalloway was the true birth of this form.
Amis is in love with English, and the marriage is a healthy one.
Embery offers a plan to implement his vision of a well ordered and prosperous country that values its conservative Somewhere members as much as its Anywhere cultural and economic elite.
Freak Power is a fascinating look into the heart of a grassroots political campaign during a violent era in American history, as one man channelled the rage and confusion of a maligned subculture into a surprisingly coherent and subversive political movement.