All of the Founding Fathers were married, and most of them had children. What do the stories of the wives and families of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison tell us about the personality and character of these great Americans? In his latest book, Thomas Fleming superbly answers … Read more
To Begin the World All Over Again: Lawrence of Arabia from Damascus to Baghdad John Hulsman, Palgrave Macmillan, 256 pages, $27.95 Those of us who try to keep up with developments during the Iraq War find that there are many basic facts about the region that don’t get answered in the daily coverage by … Read more
God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Penguin Press, 416 pages, $27.95 It was a commonplace of the late 1960s that religion was obsolete and that modern 20th-century people had no need of faith. “Is God Dead?” Time asked in 1966, and books … Read more
Marking each chapter of George Will’s latest book, One Man’s America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation, is a simple graphic of the sort of round, wire-rimmed glasses that are as recognizable to Will as was the plain black suit and slim tie to Albert Einstein. One Man’s America: The Pleasures and Provocations … Read more
Those of us who love reading history are less and less inclined to read professional historians these days. History is, even more than most of the humanities, a left-wing profession. Historians are also, like most academics, more inclined to write for their colleagues than for the public. As a result, far too many books produced … Read more
There have been so many books about Thomas Jefferson that it’s hard to see what more can be said about him. But Alan Pell Crawford, in this elegant, elegiac book, suggests that looking at Jefferson’s last years will help us understand his greatness as a Founder and as a president. Twilight at Monticello: The Final … Read more
If you want to see President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy, look around you. Scores of agencies created during his tenure are still around, including Social Security and welfare. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression Amity Shlaes; HarperCollins; 390 pages. Reviewed by Martin Morse Wooster If you want to see … Read more