Barnett: Iran Mullah Overthrow by 2010

Thomas Barnett predicts that, "Iran will experience an overthrow of the mullahs' rule by 2010." A slightly bold prediction, you say, but not exactly a hard one to make given ongoing events?   Does he get extra points for having written the above in the summer of 2003 and publishing it on page 380 of Pentagon's New Map? Considering I'd be leery of ...

Doug Stanton: John Wayne Fan

Mark Safranski has a mini-review up of Doug Stanton's Horse Soldiers. Not having read the book, I don't have anything substantive to add.  I had previously mentally noted that Horse Soldiers was also the name of a classic John Wayne movie but figured it was a coincidence -- until I saw the bottom blurb that he had previous written a book ...

Bloomsday Honors Book No One Reads

NPR has an amusing bit on "Morning Edition" by Rob Gifford on Bloomsday, the annual festival wherein "Thousands of people descend on Dublin each June 16th to celebrate Joyce's epic novel Ulysses by recreating the events in the book. The novel chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin on a single day — June 16, 1904 — a day, ...

Italy! Booze! Life!

The most compelling book review I've read in ages: Do you love Italy? Do you love booze? Do you love life? Do you feel you deserve a second chance? If you could credibly answer yes to a couple of those questions then you should buy this book. And if you can't say yes then this is the only novel you have ...

Book Review: Banquo’s Ghosts

Bill Dyer reviews Banquos's Ghosts, the first novel by Rich Lowry and Keith Korman, and finds it weak on writing and strong on moral clarity.  Having read so many spy novels with the opposite mix, he's anxiously awaiting the sequel in hopes they get a better editor. It's been some time since I've found the time and energy for reading fiction, ...

Walden Book Review

Apparently, there's this new book out by this guy named Thoreau who advocates a hermetic existence out in the woods.  Timothy Sandefur reviews it and finds it to be "a merciless collection of false profundity and Puritanism."

Thomas Barnett Interview and Book Review

Over the last four days, I've given you a thematic look at Great Powers: America and the World After Bush, the next book by Pentagon's New Map author Thomas Barnett, that goes on sale February 5th.  Because of the meatiness of the material, I mostly stuck to summary, trying to synthesize some far-ranging ideas into easily digestible bites. In today's conclusion, ...

Laura Bush’s Book

Under the header "First Lady Gets Small Book Advance" Political Wire informs me that, "According to the New York Post, First Lady Laura Bush received an advance of just $1.6 million for her book deal announced yesterday -- far less than the $8 million Hillary Clinton received for her memoir, Living History." First, as someone who writes for a living, I ...

Why Are You So Awesome?

Andrew Exum (aka "abu muqawama") offers a rather blistering review of Linda Robinson's Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq. This, too, is hagiography. ("It reads as if ghost-written by Petraeus," one friend complained.) That wasn't my complaint, though. Maybe Petraeus, like Mandela, is a man worth all the superlatives. But ...

Heads in the Sand Book Reviews

Matthew Yglesias published Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats way back in April but some of the reviews are just now hitting the 'net. Jim Henley's is in Reason and entitled, "Between Iraq and a Soft Place - Democrats counter with a kinder, gentler interventionism."  My own, which hit ...

New Book Reveals Romney . . . A Mormon

Last week, I wrote about some weird emails I received inviting me to attend an event at the National Press Club unveiling a new book that would Swift Boat a major candidate. As promised, I skipped it but kept alert for the details. Mary Ann Akers, who writes "The Sleuth" blog for WaPo, attended, along with "about a dozen reporters ...

Book Review: The Siege of Mecca

I’ve written a review of The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda, a riveting retelling of the events of November, 1979, when a group of around 500 Islamic extremists (including at least two American Black Muslims) seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca. The author concludes that this action, taken along ...

Year of Living Biblically

Matt Labash gives a strong review of A.J. Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically: It's better than the Bible. Or not better, necessarily. But it is funnier, moves faster, and doesn't bog you down with any of those genealogies. I'll wager that it won't sell as many copies, however. via Jonathan Last

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

I wanted to have this posted in a more timely fashion but, between starting a new job and a hard drive crash that kept me offline for over a week, it ended up on the backburner. Nevertheless, for that as might be interested, here's my review of the final Harry Potter book. I won't go as far as Sophie ...

Harry Potter Best Fantasy Series Ever?

Sophie Masson argues that J.K. Rowling is a "genius" and that her Harry Potter series surpasses the work of the "great fantasy authors, such as [C.S.] Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Philip Pullman." All of these books share the great themes of good and evil and the quest for wisdom and love. Their authors also share a strong background in classical literature, ...