Books, Arts and Culture

Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World By Marie C. Wilson, Viking Press, 256 pages, $24.95 Americans are currently living under the most stereotypically male leadership we have seen in decades, if not longer. The president is a parody of the swaggering, steely-eyed gunfighter; the vice president […]

In Defense of Globalization By Jagdish Bhagwati, Oxford University Press, 296 pages, $28.00 When N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, declared in February that the outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries was a good thing, he was only saying what advocates of free trade have always believed. But […]

The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, The White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill By Ron Suskind, Simon & Schuster, 348 pages, $26.00 George W. Bush has had a cold winter, and it’s not chiefly the Democrats’ doing. The weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — and with them the raison […]

Lately, trying to determine exactly how we became embroiled in Iraq has become a kind of intellectual parlor game. Was it oil? Settling old scores? Diverting attention from terrorism? Fulfilling the neoconservative agenda? There is probably some truth in each of these, but of all the reasons that have been adduced for the war […]

An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror By David Frum and Richard Perle, Random House, 284 pages, $25.95 America’s Inadvertent Empire By William Odom and Robert Dujarric, Yale University Press, 285 pages, $30.00 To readers familiar with the memoirs and histories of Great Britain’s imperial era, the echoes evoked […]

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right By Al Franken, E.P. Dutton, 379 pages, $24.95 The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception By David Corn, Crown, 337 pages, $24.00 The Book on Bush: How George W. Bush (Mis)leads America By Eric […]

This spring, if all goes according to plan, a new radio network with programs modeled after Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart will make its debut. The viewpoint of the venture is the big news. Air America Radio, as it’s now being called, promises to be the first commercial network with […]

The art of the high-brow confessional.

If French President Jacques Chirac thought he’d burnished his reputation in the Muslim world for having opposed the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, he must have been surprised to find himself recently vilified in public squares, mosques, and universities from Cairo to Tehran. The proposed ban on the hijab, or Islamic headscarf, from French state […]

A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America By Peter Steinfels, Simon & Schuster, 416 pages, $26.00 Can the Catholic Church as we know it survive in America? This is the question raised by Peter Steinfels’ tough-love letter to fellow Catholics, A People Adrift. It is no secret that […]