The October 14, 2013 issue of The Weekly Standard carries my review of this book. Back in 2007, I reviewed McCraw’s biography of Joseph Schumpeter for the Standard. (See here.) McCraw sent me an e-mail of thanks, which was very decent of him. Pity that McCraw died late this past year—I think he would have […]
Mark Leibovich, This Town (Penguin Group...
Political junkies indubitably will devour Leibovich’s chatty take on Washington, DC. I myself have a limited interest in and patience for the self-obsessed DC press-political gaggle. I tend to be more interested in political and social phenomena than chatter about them. Yet, I enjoyed Mark Leibovich’s This Town (Penguin Group, 2013). For one, Leibovich frequently […]
Benn Steil, The Battle of Bretton Woods:...
The August 26 issue of The Weekly Standard carries my review of this new book. It is very smartly written—Steil has a flair for making the abstruse interesting. That said, it is not for the casual student of economics. Appropo of a Princeton University Press book, The Battle of Bretton Woods carries loads of heady discussions […]
Dan Kennedy, Loser Goes First (Crown, 20...
My mind was exhausted. I wasn’t ready for sleep, but I hadn’t the stomach for TV. All the magazines and nonfiction books by my bed were just too much. I need an easy read—easier than any of the few dozen paperback mysteries piled up by my desk. And there it was—Dan Kennedy’s Loser Goes First. […]
Mordecai Lee, Congress vs. the Bureaucra...
The current copy of Congress & the Presidency carries my review of this interesting book. Mordecai Lee describes the more than century-long battle between the legislative and executive branch over when, how, and on what subjects federal agencies may communicate with the public. The book illustrates a classic principal-agent problem—how can one person/organization get another […]
James E. Block, The Crucible of Consent...
In October 2012, Teachers College Record published my review of James E. Block’s The Crucible of Consent: American Child Rearing and the Forging of Liberal Society (Harvard University Press, 2012). The book is a remarkable mix of erudition and nonsense, with many dashes of hyperbole. It provides a lengthy, fascinating exploration of the evolving, upper-crust, […]