THE LIBERAL VIRTUES Stephen Teles T he welfare state and the advocates of “virtue” have few friends in common. Those on the right want to save virtue from the welfare state, while those on the left want to protect the welfare state from the rhetoric of virtue. An exemplar of the latter tendency is James […]
Books
Read reviews of nonfiction books on policy, politics and power
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Dick Morris’s The New Prince
Dick Morris’s The New Prince Machiavelli Updated For The Twenty-First Century 11.01.99 | reviewed by Jonathan Chait Here are some of the chapter headings in Dick Morris’s latest book: Issues over Image, Strategy over Spin, Generosity over Self-Interest, Racism Doesn’t Work. No, really. Dick Morris, inventor of triangulation, who advised President Clinton to alter his […]
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State of the Debate: The Moral Meanings of Work
How should we think about work — as just a necessary burden that we’d like to cut to a minimum or as the organizing focus of our lives? A number of new books about work, culture, and family suggest that we need to work for more than bread alone.
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How We Lost the Peace Dividend
After every previous war, we sent troops home and cut defense spending. The Col War is over, but real spending still runs 85 percent of the Cold War average.
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State of the Debate: Indelible Colors
A book by two political theorists argues that new, cultural definitions of race can be as insidious as the old, biological ones.
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State of the Debate: The Other American Dilemma
Anthony Lukas’s last book is a powerful tale of what used to be “class warfare” in America — and a lesson about why so many people have had a hard time telling that story.
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Below the Beltway: The Irresponsible Elites
Washington, D.C., March 5, 1998 A s I write, the Monica Lewinsky affair-or perhaps episode is a better term-is far from resolved, but it is possible to draw certain conclusions about the role of the press. The most important is that the barrier separating the elite media from the print and television tabloids-the Washington Post […]
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State of the Debate: The Rise and Fall of Racialized Liberalism
Liberalism took a fateful turn in the 1960s by redefining reform in racial terms. Two new books on urban politics sometimes overstate their case against recent liberal policies, but they help clarify what went wrong.
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Connecting with E.M. Forster
A futuristic fantasy from early in this century offers us a hellish version of life on the Internet.
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The Other Edmund Wilson
Today there is no shortage of writing about literature or of literature about writing. But there used to be writing that was about both.