The December 6, 2010 issue of The Weekly Standard carries my review of Kathryn Allamong Jacob, The Life and Times of Sam Ward, Man-About-Washington in the Gilded Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). Sam Ward was quite a character—fantastically smart, frequently short-sighted, and endlessly lurching from fabulous success to disaster. When he arrived in Washington, […]
America’s Fiscal Health and Federalism
Today, the online version of The Weekly Standard published a short piece of mine titled, “Federalism, Anyone?” In it I suggest that the discussion of the nation’s finances ought to include the subject of federalism. Federalism, in short, raises basic questions of what the federal government should do, and what may be handled by state […]
Collaborative Democracy on the Move
The July/August issue of Public Administration Review carries my lengthy review of Beth Simone Noveck’s Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings Institution Press, 2009). Noveck is the U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer and Director—the person heading the Obama Administration’s Open Government Initiative. In my review, I […]
Matt Latimer, Speech-less: Tales of a Wh...
Speech-less tells an all-too-familiar tale—an idealistic twenty-something comes to DC to work for the government and ends up disillusioned. Matt Latimer grew up in a humble town in Michigan, the son of two committed liberal Democrats. He caught the fever for conservatism, which included a philia for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson. A clever chap, Latimer […]
Sam Tanenhaus, The Death of Conservatism...
A Thoughtful Take on the Travails of Modern Conservatism, by Kevin R. Kosar, October 29, 2009 A cacophony of voices have taken up the topic of “what’s wrong with the right?” Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, has written an engaging book on the subject. Tanenhaus’s stated interest is in conservatism […]
Andrew F. Smith, Hamburger: A Global His...
Mmmmm, Burgers…., by Kevin R. Kosar, September 7, 2009 I met Andy Smith about a decade ago. At the time, he was working full-time at an educational not-for-profit organization, and cranking out books on food history at the same time. I remember being astonished by his work ethic; he got up every day hideously early, […]