December 14, 2003
Today's capture reminded me of a scene from Tolkien, although it's not the Lord of the Rings, it's from The Silmarillion. I suppose it may be a bit silly to use this as a reference to Saddam Hussein, but it sounds oddly familiar to his capture. This passage comes from the chapter titled Of The Voyage of Earendil and describes the capture of Morgoth, who was Sauron's leader during the First Age of Middle Earth: ... and all of the pits of Morgoth were broken and unroofed, and the might of the Valar descended into the deeps of the earth. There Morgoth stood at last at bay, and yet unvaliant. He fled into the deepest of his mines, and sued for peace and pardon; but his feet were hewn from under him, and he was hurled upon his face. Then he was bound with the chain Angainor which he had...
March 20, 2004
According to new German scholarship, Vladimir Nabokov plagiarized the most famous -- and notorious -- of his works, the controversial novel Lolita: A novella, published in 1916 by Heinz von Eschwege, describes a girl called Lolita who obsesses and then seduces the narrator. The narrator, who is lodging in her house while on holiday, is distraught when the girl dies at the end of the story - astoundingly similar to Nabokov's book, published in 1956, claims Michael Maar, a literary scholar. "The name is the same, the title, the fact that it is written in the first person," he told the Telegraph. "There is a close description of first seeing Lolita, looking into her eyes and seeing she was more than a girl, more than a child. The narrators are lodgers and both have passionate affairs and then Lolita dies." Furthermore, both Nabokov and von Eschwege lived in the same...
May 4, 2004
I don't mean to write a book review here, never having read Globalia by French author Jean-Christophe Rufin, but based on the New York Times review, I don't plan on adding it to my summer reading list, either. Alan Riding gives plenty of column space to what appears to be nothing more than a bad derivative of Brave New World, 1984, and Logan's Run, with a heavy dose of French anti-Americanism tossed in for seasoning: In the novel Globalia, which embraces much of North America and Europe and parts of Asia, is the political unit that dominates the globe, aspiring to be a perfect world in which organ replacement ensures extraordinary longevity, private companies flourish and social welfare is guaranteed, political and ethnic conflicts have disappeared thanks to the abolition of history. Its motto is "Liberty, Security, Prosperity." Globalia's cities and territories are enclosed by bulletproof glass walls and roofs...
May 14, 2004
The London Independent -- a very left-wing newspaper in the fine British broadsheet traditions of partisanship -- reviews the new book published by disgraced Labour MP George Galloway, whose support of Saddam was apparently buttressed by numerous payoffs from the Iraqi regime. You might expect that the Independent would receive Galloway's new book with some sympathy. You would be wrong. Reviewer Johann Hari savages Galloway with a zeal one would have expected from the Telegraph or a Rupert Murdoch publication like the Sun, calling Galloway a "Saddamist" and his book an "incoherent rant" (via Memeorandum): Unlike the vast majority of those who opposed the recent war, he has crossed over into blatant, full-throated apologism for dictatorship. Initially, he tries to keep up the pretence that he consistently opposed Saddam. He claims that when he saluted Saddam with the words, "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability", he...
June 23, 2004
Bill Clinton's new autobiography, My Life, should have had a ready-made audience, at least among the left-leaning intelligentsia. After all, his presidency still remains the gold standard for the left, eight years of supposed peace and prosperity that turned out to be an illusion, one revealed to us all on 9/11 as the culmination of a series of attacks in a war we refused to recognize being waged against us during his presidency. At any rate, his personal popularity remains high among the literati, which one would expect to receive his new book with heightened sympathy. If this was ever so, then it speaks even more ill of Clinton's efforts. The New York Times, which still spends prodigious amounts of ink defending his presidency, savaged My Life earlier this week: The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull the sound...
July 7, 2004
My friend and colleague John "Rocket Man" Hinderaker at Power Line notes that Robert Byrd, the most senior Senator in years and tenure, has a new book coming out titled Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency. The Amazon listing for the occasionally coherent West Virginian's lonely challenge to the Bush administration includes this classic from the book publisher: In the months and years following September 11, Senator Robert C. Byrd has viewed with alarm what he considers to be a "slow unraveling of the people's liberties," when all dissenting voices were stilled and awesome power swung suddenly to the president to fight a "war on terror." "Awesome power swung"? I assume that Byrd's publisher may refer to the Patriot Act and the authorization for the use of force in Iraq. In both cases, power didn't "swing", Congress voted both bills into law. The Patriot Act simply allowed law-enforcement...
July 14, 2004
Hugh Hewitt, who has been a great friend to this blog and its two authors, writes in his WorldNetDaily column about his new book and the "adopt-a-Lefty-journalist" program he's launching with it: Is it possible to penetrate the cocoons that Dowd, Krugman, Dionne, Hunt and most reporters at the bigs live within? Not if we rely on their own intellectual curiosity. They don't get out much, and when they do, they don't talk with the red state folks. So adopt a couple and begin to send them the books they need to read. Start with mine. Track down an address via the Web most major papers have their mailing addresses pretty accessible, as do most studios and have a book or two or 10 sent off to a national name and to a local reporter as well. Send a gift card with a note encouraging these people to...
September 25, 2004
Recently, I have been added to a book distribution list from HarperCollins, for which I am grateful. I've received two books thus far from the program and I wish I could be wildly complimentary about them both -- but unfortunately, neither one appears worthwhile. The first, Joe Scarborough's Rome Wasn't Burnt In A Day, is part memoir and part a Quixotic challenge to an entrenched bureaucracy in which Republicans and Democrats alike demonstrate the old maxim that power corrupts. Scarborough communicates a bitter disappointment that the Republican revolution has morphed into the same kind of pork-barrel troughsucking against which his freshman Congressional class won election in 1994. Unfortunately, Scarborough's book gets sunk by the condescension and hostility that literally seeps from almost every paragraph. His important points wind up playing second fiddle to an immature impulse to indulge in childish namecalling and score-settling. Not only that, but Scarborough simply gets...
December 2, 2004
The AP reports that Barbara Boxer has broadened her fantasy world beyond her Senate voting record. Boxer will publish her first novel next autumn, a thriller with a leftist Senate heroine and an eeeeeeeeeevil conservatives as antagonists: Infighting and power, alliances and revenge it's just another day in the Capitol. California Sen. Barbara Boxer has mined her workplace for a suspense novel in which the main character is an activist senator who does battle with right-wing ideologues. That may sound familiar to anyone who knows the liberal Democrat's record. But Boxer said the as-yet-unnamed novel, her first, is purely a work of fiction, though the characters and scenes are drawn from her 12 years in the Senate. "A lot of what is in the book clearly comes from my world," Boxer said. "The clash of the political and the personal, it became very interesting to me, and the role...
December 27, 2004
Hugh Hewitt's new book, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World will ship soon from Amazon and appear in your local bookstores. I'm waiting for an advance copy for review, but I also plan on buying the book for my daughter-in-law as well. The Elder at Fraters Libertas has already read his copy and gives an excellent review, as does Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit. Who better than Hugh could dissect the ramifications of the New Media's emergence and the potential for the citizen journalists? I'm excited, and even though my blogging has greatly reduced my pleasure-reading time, I plan on putting Blog at the top of my priority list once it arrives. Any literary agents that want my opinion on the blogosphere, feel free to contact me, of course ......
January 7, 2005
Radioblogger (aka Generalissimo Duane) has the finalists ready for your vote in his Blog poster contest. Photoshopped entries from around the globe have been submitted -- 325 in all -- an Duane has whittled it down to 10 deserving finalists. Make sure you take a look at all of them, but don't forget to vote for your favorite. If you're from Seattle, you can vote for dead relatives as well. (And don't forget to demand recount after recount until your candidate wins, either.) For those looking for a little guidance, I'm trying to stay neutral ... but longtime CQ reader/commenter Peyton Randolph has made it into the finals. I'm not going to tell y'all which one is his, but let's just wish that the Force is with him on Sunday evening! UPDATE: I should also have noticed that another CQ reader, Derek Brigham, is in the lead right now with...
January 22, 2005
You say you don't have time to read Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World by Hugh Hewitt, soon to be a best-seller? I'd tell you that even though the book is a brilliant look into the transformation of information markets, it's also incredibly accessible and very quick-paced, laced with the erudition and wit of its author that is evident in his radio show. But if you really mean that you simply cannot stop and read books the traditional way, readers can now order the upcoming audio CD of Hugh's book. Now you can get the skinny on how blogs have changed the dynamics of the media marketplace, decentralizing the flow of information from a small group of decisionmakers to the wide and diverse realm of the bloggers. For the first time since Guttenburg, technology has unleashed the consumers of information and put them in charge of its...
January 24, 2005
Hugh Hewitt traveled to New York, braving hours of delay, to make two short appearances on national TV this morning. He first appeared on Fox and Friends, which I think I TiVo'd for later viewing. Hugh went from there to CNN and an appearance on American Morning. Unfortunately, his appearance there was all too brief: HEWITT: Well, I've been a broadcast journalists for 15 years. I've worked in print and television and radio. And the blogosphere is by far the most accurate and the most objective in terms of accountability. Because the moment you make a mistake, you get jumped on by your colleagues and your adversaries in the blogosphere. Dan Rather got brought down by bloggers. O'BRIEN: I was going to ask you about that. HEWITT: Yes. Powerline found it. A number of us jumped on to the story, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and others. All right -- who wants to take...
June 12, 2005
I'm no fan of the Clintons, but the Right has had its problem reining in its vitriol regarding Bill and Hillary since 1992. The last five years have seen that mostly disappear (and reappear as Bush hysteria on the Left), but with Hillary running for re-election to the Senate in 2006 and probably for President in 2008, everyone expected it to return sometime. However, no one could have predicted that former Newsweek editor Ed Klein, of all people, would fan the flames of Clintonosis with a disgusting personal attack that purports to dissect Chelsea's conception (hat tip: Strata-Sphere): "I'm going back to my cottage to rape my wife," Klein quotes Bill Clinton as saying during a Bermuda getaway in 1979. In the morning, the Clintons' room "looked like World War III. There are pillows and busted-up furniture all over the place," an unnamed source tells Klein. Klein source claims Bill...
June 15, 2005
Bernard Goldberg, the former CBS reporter who blew the lid off institutional media bias with his book Bias, will name the top 100 American screw-ups in his upcoming publication, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken Is #37). A press release sent to bloggers (such as Bill at INDC Journal, who also blogged about it this morning) has us guessing at the other denizens on Goldberg's list. Amazon has the following description posted: Bernard Goldberg takes dead aim at the America Bashers (the cultural elites who look down their snobby noses at "ordinary" Americans) ... the Hollywood Blowhards (incredibly ditzy celebrities who think they're smart just because they're famous) ... the TV Schlockmeisters (including the one whose show has been compared to a churning mass of maggots devouring rotten meat) ... the Intellectual Thugs (bigwigs at some of our best colleges, whose views run the gamut from...
July 5, 2005
Like a great many people in the blogosphere, Bernard Goldberg's book Bias resonated deeply with me. His honesty about the institutional biases of the mainstream media outlets, especially at his former home at CBS, confirmed what many of us argued for years: that the liberal mindset of the editorial filters at these institutions directly impacted what we read and saw in their output. Goldberg described himself in that book as "classically liberal," arguing that liberalism in America had taken a sharp left turn and left him and many others behind, allowing him to see the bias closely from the inside out. That self-categorization may not apply any longer after the publication of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37. In this effort, Goldberg effectively outs himself as a conservative-libertarian as his roster of American embarrassments overwhelmingly takes on the Left. From its first pages, Goldberg...
I had the opportunity to interview Bernard Goldberg this morning as we drove around Washington DC, as he kicked off the publicity campaign for his new book, The 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37). Unfortunately, my very full schedule today kept me from posting about the interview until now -- and that's too bad, because Goldberg has definitely declared himself on a mission with this book. Most of the people who frequent the blogosphere have read his seminal book on media bias, prosaically titled Bias. When I mentioned the fact that the book inspired me and many others to take action to combat the pervasive cultural bias in the media, he told me that the problem is much wider than that. "This takes on a much bigger subject, and this is the culture at large," he said. "Whether we are Democrats or Republicans, liberals...
July 6, 2005
Here is the first part of the transcript for my interview with Bernard Goldberg. In this part of the conversation, Goldberg talks at length about his disenchantment with liberalism and his frustration at the revolution in the liberal approach since the days of John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. CQ: Thank you for being here. Im a big fan of your previous book, Bias -- BG: Thank you. CQ: One of my inspirations for becoming a blogger was the work you did in Bias, and I think thats true of half the blogosphere, at least. That resonated, as you know, not just with the blogosphere but with a large portion of America that felt disenfranchised by the media at large. It seems that your new book speaks to that same constituency, but maybe on a broader basis. Is that your goal in writing this book? BG: Thats exactly right. What Bias...
I continue my converasation with Bernard Goldberg in this installment of the interview. Goldberg talks about his experiences with the blogosphere, the connection of sports to culture, and the New York Times. You can find Part I here. CQ: Did you follow some of the speculation in the blogosphere and the media as to who was going to be in your Top 10, Top 25? BG: [Laughs] A little bit. You know, Im laughing because Ive geared myself up to hear people say, What? How come you didnt put Hillary on the list? Things like that. Of course, it goes without saying that the people on the Left will say to me, How come Bush isnt on the list? How come Rush isnt on the list? So Im going to let people have fun with the list. I give them the opportunity on the very last page to tell me...
July 11, 2005
Ed Klein perceives a conspiracy in his inability to get bookings on television to promote his new biography of Hillary Clinton. Howard Kurtz notices that Klein hasn't received nearly the attention given to Kitty Kelley for her load of tripe about the Bush family: Despite the enormous hype surrounding Edward Klein's scathing and hearsay-filled book about Hillary Rodham Clinton, the author has been ignored by all but two television talk shows. This collective cold shoulder hasn't stopped "The Truth About Hillary" from hitting No. 2 yesterday on the coveted New York Times list. "It's the biggest example to date of how major media censorship doesn't stop a book anymore from being a bestseller," Klein declares. ... Klein says that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews, CNN's Paula Zahn, Fox's John Gibson and ABC's "Good Morning America" were among those who had tentatively booked or expressed strong interest in him, only...
July 17, 2005
I refrained from running out to purchase the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, during the midnight madness sales at the local bookstores. Last time, that meant serious delays in getting a copy of the book. However, either Scholastic produced a more realistic first run or the initial enthusiasm may have been overestimated. When I went to the bookstore on Saturday, I found several dozen copies at 40% off available and almost no shoppers in the store. I took advantage of the opportunity and picked up my copy, and after finishing a couple of other projects this weekend, tore through the new installment. * SPOILERS -- BEWARE! * In my opinion, J. K. Rowling improves with each new outing, and Half-Blood Prince follows in that tradition. Rowling plays around a bit more with the formula here, just as she started to do with Goblet of Fire,...
July 21, 2005
Bernard Goldberg appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, which for conspiracy theorists makes his ninth appearance on Fox since the release of his book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37). Bill O'Reilly and Goldberg mostly appeared amused at the debacle, with O'Reilly wondering why Goldberg bothered to appear on Donny Deutsch's show in the first place. Apparently, its overnight Nielsen rating was a whopping 0.1, or around 70,000 -- and that after this blog and others "promoting" Goldberg's appearance for 30 hours or so. Goldberg's tongue-in-cheek response: "Well ... it seemed like a good idea at the time." The tone remained light throughout the interview; when the satellite feed dropped out for a few seconds, both joked about Deutsch pulling the plug. Not as funny, though, was Goldberg's revelation that the Deutsch show edited down the segment. The show's 30-minute run time last night (when...
September 6, 2005
I just received a new book in the mail from the folks at the Weekly Standard, The Weekly Standard - A Reader: 1995 - 2005. Edited by William Kristol, it provides a number of the highlights published by the highly-respected conservative magazine over the past ten years. Writers like P.J. O'Rourke, John Podhoretz (one of my favorites), David Gelernter, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Barnes, and many more find themselves well represented in the book's 500+ pages. Some of these articles will read like long-lost friends, while others will provide fresh perspectives on new topics. I suspect that in the same way that reading out-of-date magazines in medical offices occasionally gives one a perspective on new and pressing issues, this new book will provide a similar experience in most of its essays. Since we at CQ are all about full disclosure, I should point out that I received a review copy for...
October 21, 2005
After a stressful week at work and on the blog, I came home this evening to a pleasant surprise. My copy of Michelle Malkin's new book, Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, arrived in the mail today. I'd normally take a quick read through the book and write a review for the blog, but I've already had the privilege of reading it ahead of time during one of Michelle's final draft stages. She has put together quite a list of nutcase eruptions from the far Left, and sometimes even the nearer Left as well. (I read the book and offered a scant few suggestions for edits, none of them particularly momentous, and Michelle very graciously thanks me in the Acknowledgments section.) Those who enjoy Michelle's blog and her efforts during the past election to ensure that the excesses of the lunatic fringe of Air America, Howard Dean, MoveOn, International ANSWER, and...
December 6, 2005
The Daily Mirror dishes out some Harry Potter gossip that will likely have fans buzzing for the next year or so while they wait for the final installment of the Potter series to apparate at their local bookstores. Jim Dale, who provides the voice of Harry Potter for American audio books, claimed that author JK Rowling has tired of the Potter phenomenon and wants to kill off the character in the final installment (h/t: Hugh Hewitt): HARRY Potter may die in the next book in the series because author JK Rowling wants to kill him off, it was claimed last night. Actor Jim Dale - the voice of the teenage wizard in the US audio books - believes the seventh and final instalment will spell the end for Harry. He made the astonishing claim after meeting with the writer to discuss his characterisation of the parts. The revelation will shock...
March 9, 2006
Alan Greenspan has just received $8.5 million for his memoirs, the second-highest advance for a nonfiction book. Given his record of inscrutability achieved through the dizzying amount of detail he produced as Federal Reserve chair, do you wonder how he would write his autobiography? Comedian and newly-minted country singer Rick Moranis shares his thoughts in the New York Times: IT was the best of times but it might also have quite possibly led to the worst of times. One thing was for sure: it was a beautiful day. It felt like, oh, around 63 or 64 degrees Fahrenheit. I estimated, assessing the precise time of day, the mean annualized temperature, all available barometrics (which were hovering at about 30.2 and appeared to be falling), and the constantly changing, though only partial, cloud cover which seemingly would have to have been caused by prevailing winds, that it might get up to...
May 10, 2006
I have started reading John Podhoretz' new look at the next presidential election and Hillary Clinton's chances to reach the White House, and it's an excellent read so far. Can She Be Stopped? argues that the Democratic nomination is Hillary's to lose, unless the Republicans can get their act together in a manner which has clearly escaped them this year. John also analyzes the deep divisions within both parties and how Hillary can exploit them. John also lays out a plan for the GOP to follow in order to corner Hillary and dent her electoral prospects -- and then names the one salvation from a second Clinton administration. When I've finished, I'll write a full review, but so far Can She Be Stopped? is a great read. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the 2008 elections....
May 22, 2006
Bernard Goldberg has a new paperback edition of his book, The 100 110 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37), coming out tomorrow and available now through Amazon and through his own website. He has added ten new entries to his list, expanded his opening comments, and discussed some of the experiences he had last year when promoting the book the first time around. CQ readers will remember that I interviewed Bernard last year on the first release. I just concluded a terrific interview with him this evening and will be posting a long article based on the interview. (Podcasting will not be possible due to some technical problems with the recording.) Stay tuned! Bernard Golderg Interview When we started out, I knew that Bernard would have some time constraints. He had very graciously allowed me to reschedule to the evening while still giving me the...
June 7, 2006
One of the topics that flew under my radar yesterday came from an interview Ann Coulter did with Matt Lauer on the Today show, promoting her new book, Godless. Other bloggers have picked up this story before I did, where I saw it at Rick Moran's Right Wing Nuthouse. Rick notes a particularly disturbing part of the transcript from the show: LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration: COULTER: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process.” "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies....
June 19, 2006
The Jerusalem Post reviews a book by Joshua E. London on the first war that pitted Americans against jihadist Muslims titled Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation. The history of that conflict, and how America prevailed over an enemy comprised of suicidal zealots, would appear informative in today's conflict: A fledgling republic without a navy, the United States seemed ripe for the picking. In 1783, Muslim pirates - the sea-faring terrorists of their day - began attacking American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean, and the following year, the Moroccans captured a brig called Betsey and enslaved its crew. Soon afterwards, the ruler of Algiers declared war on the US, a declaration backed up by marauding corsairs. The situation worsened with each coming year, but for the life of them, the Americans could not figure out what they did...
June 20, 2006
Ron Suskind, whose new book The One Percent Solution revealed spectacular allegations of pending terrorist attacks in the US, may have confused two different terrorists in his research. The error could have led to erroneous conclusions in Suskind's book, ABC News reports, but Suskind stands by his work: Counter-terrorism officials in the United States and Great Britain say an allegation of a "catastrophic breakdown in communications," reported in a new book on terror, is based on the author's own breakdown in communication. Officials say author Ron Suskind, in "The One Percent Doctrine," got names confused when he reported that the mastermind of last year's London bombings, Mohammad Siddique Khan, had contacts in the United States, had been placed on a no-fly list and was prevented from boarding a plane to the United States in 2003. Terror experts say that no evidence shows that M S Khan ever entered the United...
August 25, 2006
Over the weekend, I will mention some of the books currently on my desk, in various states of review. However, I just received a new book, The Blog of War, that deserves a special mention. It's a collection of milblog essays compiled by one of the best milbloggers in the 'sphere, Blackfive -- under his real name, Matthew Currier Burden. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks just released it in the "trade-book" format. It looks like an excellent read, and I'm hoping to get to it as soon as I get through a prior commitment to another author. In the meantime, however, CQ readers can beat me to the punch by ordering the book for themselves. Let's support one of our own in his new venture....
September 25, 2006
I have a number of books piling up on my desk these days, begging to be read. I'm in the middle of Conservatives Betrayed by Richard Viguerie, but I'm taking a long time finishing it due to other projects. I'm hoping to finish it soon and then contact the author for a brief chat on behalf of CQ readers. It's a good read, and I'd recommend it to disaffected conservatives, although I'm not in complete agreement with his conclusions. I just received Max Boot's new book, War Made New, this weekend. Max is a favorite columnist and a CQ reader, so I hear. I'm looking forward to reading the history of technology in warfare and the impact it's had on world history. It focuses on 1500 forward, so I presume the use of the longbow as the first effective surface-to-surface missile attack may not be covered. Andrew Sullivan's The Conservative...
December 15, 2006
Last month, HarperCollins and its Regan imprint shocked and angered the nation by announcing the publication of a book by OJ Simpson titled If I Did It. The firestorm of criticism surrounding that decision eventually caused HarperCollins to cancel the publication and the Fox Network to cancel its two-part interview with imprint executive Judith Regan and Simpson. Now the other shoe has dropped: O.J. Simpson's would-be publisher, Judith Regan, was fired Friday, her sensational, scandalous tenure at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. ending with the tersest of announcements. "Judith Regan's employment with HarperCollins has been terminated effective immediately," HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman said in a statement. "The REGAN publishing program and staff will continue as part of the HarperCollins General Books Group." Regan's firing comes less than a month after Murdoch's cancellation of Simpson's hypothetical murder confession, "If I Did It," a planned book and Fox television interview that was greeted...
March 14, 2007
Today I received Hugh Hewitt's new book, A Mormon in the White House?, his new campaign biography of Mitt Romney. Hugh structured the book by discussing "10 things every American should know about Mitt Romney," which is also the subtitle of the book itself. It's not the normal authorized campaign biography, which should come as no surprise for anyone who knows Hugh and reads his books. Mormon talks about Mitt's involvement in the marriage debate in Massachussetts, his lack of military service, the evolution of his stance on abortion -- and of course, Romney's religion. It should make for a great read, and be sure to get your copy ASAP. It should also serve as an excellent reference guide for the upcoming primary fight....
March 18, 2007
Earlier this afternoon, I had the opportunity to speak with Myrna Blyth, longtime editor-in-chief of the Ladies Home Journal, columnist for National Review, and co-author of How To Raise an American: 1776 Fun and Easy Tools, Tips, and Activities to Help Your Child Love This Country. We spoke about the difficulties that parents face in instilling into their children a sense of pride in their American heritage. Her book, co-authored by former White House speechwriter Chriss Winston, discusses those difficulties and presents a multitude of suggestions for solutions. She also will launch a website, How To Raise An American, to continue supporting parents who want to help their children value the American experience. Here's a small portion of our interview, podcasted for your convenience: EM: Tell us why you saw a need for a book to help parents raise patriotic children. MB: Well, I think both my co-author and I...
May 2, 2007
Ronald Reagan inspired many analyses of his performance, from historically brilliant to accidentally successful, and worse. Journalists used him as a blank canvas for the most part, projecting their own biases and agendas onto Reagan and missing the essence of the man. Fortunately, Reagan faithfully kept up his diaries until the end of his presidency, and Harper Collins will publish extracts by historian Douglas Brinkley in The Reagan Diaries later this month. I've posted some excerpts at Heading Right from Howard Kurtz' article in the Washington Post, and we find out that Reagan is as we essentially knew him: witty, honest, passionate, and intelligent. In a front-page story, the placement of which speaks volumes about Reagan’s legacy, the wisdom of the 40th president remains trenchant and compelling today....
May 21, 2007
I often receive books for review; in fact, I receive so many, I rarely get the chance to read through most of them. One recent arrival caught my attention for being out of the ordinary. In Defense of Our America comes from the ACLU’s Anthony D. Romero and acts as an apologia for the group’s often-controversial positions. I decided to take a read through the book to see whether it would present an interesting challenge to my assumptions. Unfortunately, Romero and his co-author Dina Temple-Raston only present a disappointing set of half-truths and worse. Over at Heading Right, I describe why I put the book down for good after only one chapter, convinced of the dishonesty of the authors in their attempt to paint themselves as the saviors of the nation. If you're planning on buying this book when it comes out tomorrow, you'll want to read this post....
June 4, 2007
I've started to read The Reagan Diaries, edited and collected by Douglas Brinkley, which cover his entire presidency. It's quite remarkable, and even more useful as a reference guide thanks to the helpful index in the back of the book. So far, it shows that Reagan had been quite involved in policy matters, in contrast to his commonly-accepted persona as a hands-off CEO. Today as I began my tour through the book, I noted an interesting passage that has direct relevance to today's Middle East problem: Sunday, June 7 (1981): ... Got word of Israeli bombing of Iraq -- nuclear reactor. I swear I believe Armageddon is near. ... (Israeli PM Menachem) Begin informed us after the fact. Tuesday, June 9: ... Ended day with an N.S.C. meeting re the bombing of Iraq. Begin insists the plant was preparing to produce nuclear weapons for use on Israel. If he waited...
June 11, 2007
As many CQ readers already know, the First Mate and I volunteer our time at Twin Cit