Books, Culture & the Arts

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 […]

Downsizing in America: Reality, Causes, and Consequences By William J. Baumol, Alan S. Blinder and Edward N. Wolff, Russell Sage Foundation, 321 pages, $29.95 The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans and Their Families By Beth Shulman, The New Press, 255 pages, $25.95 Back in 1994, the late, […]

The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness By Virginia Postrel, HarperCollins, 237 pages, $24.95 Virginia Postrel’s The Substance of Style joins David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise in a new kind of conservative cultural criticism. The recipe is simple: Charmingly describe a new cluster […]

Americans, thankfully, are not being gunned down in disputes over political correctness. But disputes over who should decide which ideas should circulate where are very much in play. In fact, a new front has opened. On Oct. 21, the House of Representatives declared incontrovertibly that, “The events and aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, have underscored […]