Brzezinski’s Second Chance

Being an author can be a very cushy job once you’ve got a good reputation and money for research assistants.
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Second Chance examines how three post-Cold War American Presidents handled America’s role as the world’s only superpower.  Brzezinski’s own policy prescriptions in the book are mostly vague and general; when they are specific they [...]

The Presidential High Dive

As cynical Americans, we hardly expect our politicians to do in office what they promised to do on the campaign trail.  But many presidents end up doing just the opposite of what they promised, speeding away from their original platform like an Olympian diving off the 10 meter- though rarely with such purpose or grace.
Woodrow [...]

The Strange Death of American Liberalism

The Strange Death of American Liberalism by H.W. Brands purports to explain why LBJ-style liberalism no longer has any real influence on American governace.
He is right to note that its influence has faded away.  No matter how many times Bill Clinton is labelled a tax-and-spend liberal, the facts remain that he balanced the budget, reformed [...]

Guns of August, Pity of War

I’ve been delving into histories of the First World War. I recently finished two books by popular historians, Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and Niall Ferguson’s Pity Of War. Though the first covers only the first month of the war, and the second examines several topics over the time frame of the [...]

Arthur Conan Doyle- Historian

The man remembered for Sherlock Holmes was not only a novelist, but a contemporary historian as well.
Searching for a good history of WWI in the Widener Library, I stumbled across his 5-volume his of the war. I decided to see whether his writing ability carried over to this new field.
One might expect that a [...]

An End to War: Don’t get even, get MAD

My last post was a lengthy attempt to explain how the two World Wars changed Europeans’ philosophy, making another major European war unlikely.
In this post I will propose a shorter, simpler explanation.
It’s all about technology.
Before World War One, the logistics of transportation and supply did not allow for large armies to take the field. [...]

The War to End All Wars

The memory of the Great European War, of millions of young men fighting and dying to win a few yards of shell-pocked mud, was enough to convince many that war was an ugly, irrational, pointless endeavor which civilized nations should have the good sense to avoid in perpetuity.  They hoped that something good could emerge [...]

The Real Story of Thanksgiving

How the pilgrims stopped being communists and embraced the power of private property and markets.
I’ve heard this story before, in Rush Limbaugh’s book. It makes for a great tale, especially since in some ways we look to the pilgrims as models for how our nation should behave. But as I have never heard [...]