David Frum begins a withering review for The Daily Beast, “Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 is an important book that will have large influence. It is unfortunately not a good book.”

I’ve just recently finished a couple of books, and thought I would make a couple of quick recommendations: The Physics of Star Trek: This book is perfect for people who aren’t well versed in physics, but need a reference point, such as Star Trek, to make it understandable. Numerous fascinating little nuggets, like the possibility [...]

A quick note: my Mark Levin blogging will continue this week. I got sidetracked by a few other things, but I should be back on track now.

Taking a dive into Mark Levin’s view of Federalism.

At the present time, my schedule has settled up a little bit so I hope to be finished with blogging Liberty and Tyranny within the next two weeks. So what’s next? Well, several commenters here have stated that Glenn Beck shouldn’t be casually dismissed because “nobody addresses his arguments.” Very well, I accept the challenge. [...]

Examining Levin’s examination of the Constitution, jurisprudence, and property rights.

In chapter three of Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin applies his typical standards of logic and evidence to matters of faith.

The blogging of Mark Levin’s magnum opus continues.

Part two of the ongoing series blogging Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny.

I’m blogging Mark Levin’s Conservative Manifesto. Here’s part one…

Andy McNab writes books for people who like video games.

It is impossible to read Dirty, Sexy Politics and come away with the impression that you have read anything other than the completely unedited ramblings of an idiot.

Wilder Publications puts the following warning label on its reprints of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist Papers, Fox News reports: The key passage: “This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written [...]

In a recent Guardian interview shared by Tyler Cowen, controversial popularist Malcolm Gladwell offers this insight: Re-reading is much underrated. I’ve read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time. I’m pretty sure that this contradicts the entire [...]

Humorist Bill Geerhart wrote a series of letters to famous and infamous people in the voice of “his inner child, 10-year-old Billy.” They’ve been published as Little Billy’s Letters: An Incorrigible Inner Child’s Correspondence with the Famous, Infamous, and Just Plain Bewildered. Boing Boing‘s Mark Frauenfelter reproduces some of his favorites, including exchanges with the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.”

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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

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 [...]

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 [...]

Former Sports Illustrated associate editor Don Yaeger’s book about the Duke lacrosse case, written with former head coach Mike Pressler, is a very good overview of the circumstances surrounding the fateful events of March 13-14, 2006, when members of Duke’s lacrosse team created a “perfect storm”: hiring two adult entertainers for a party that went [...]

George Will reviews Cato vice president Brink Lindsey‘s new book The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture. It’s a useful reminder of the staggering level of improvement in our lives as compared to those of our great grandparents. Until very recently, he notes, when people prayed for their daily bread, they [...]

My review of John Robb’s important new book, Brave New War, is up at The Examiner. John Robb has spent his career studying terrorism, computer systems and risk management. He has brought these experiences to bear in this vital study of global terrorism. The view is bleak. The terrorists are not only winning, they are [...]

Alex Tabarrok has en extensive review of Tom Slee’s No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart, which he dubs “the best of the anti-market books: it is well written, serious, and knowledgeable about economics.” The next several paragraphs demonstrate why “best of the anti-market books” is faint praise, indeed, and makes the description “well written, [...]

Mexico is considering asking the U.N. to stop the U.S. from building a fence along its southern border. Mexico’s foreign secretary said Monday the country may take a dispute over U.S. plans to build a fence on the Mexican border to the United Nations. Luis Ernesto Derbez told reporters in Paris, his first stop on [...]

Brian C. Anderson, South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias (Washington, Regnery) 2005, xv, 191, Notes, Index, $24.95 hardcover. I accepted Regnery Publishing’s offer to review City Journal editor Brian Anderson’s brand new book South Park Conservatives with great anticipation. The titular concept, popularized (as “South Park Republicans“) by Andrew Sullivan and Stephen [...]