In the latest review of America at the Crossroads, Michiko Kakutani writes in the New York Times that Francis Fukuyama, “serves up a powerful indictment of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq and the role that neoconservative ideas — concerning preventive war, benevolent hegemony and unilateral action — played in
Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian leader who was on trial for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, died in his prison cell on Saturday, apparently from a heart attack. Known in the U.S. as “the butcher of the Balkans,” Milosevic orchestrated a decade of violence
“This book is about manliness,” begins the preface of a provocative new book by Harvey C. Mansfield, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government at Harvard University. What is that? It’s best to start from examples we know: our sports heroes, too many to name; Margaret Thatcher, the British prime
(From Chapter 2 of America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama) In the period leading up to and following the Iraq war, an enormous amount of ink was spilled on the subject of neoconservatives and their alleged capture of the Bush administration. The story is endlessly fascinating because it appears
An essay adapted from Francis Fukuyama’s new book America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, was published by the New York Times Magazine this weekend. Fukuyama’s criticism of the Iraq war put him at odds with neoconservative friends both within and outside the Bush administration. Here, Fukuyama
“[A] beautifully conceived and penetrating book…Clarke has produced one of the finest studies of American slavery ever written.” The glowing review, courtesy of Steven Hahn in the latest issue of The New Republic, is of Erskine Clarke’s new book, Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic, a narrative history of the intimately
Thomas Eakins was misunderstood in life, his brilliant work earned little acclaim, and hidden demons tortured and drove him. Yet the portraits he painted more than a century ago captivate us today, and he is now widely acclaimed as the finest portrait painter our nation has ever produced. This book
“The scale and drama of the largest of these works takes your breath away. This is art as theatrical spectacle.” The works so acclaimed are a series of monumental black-and-white paintings of the London cityscape by John Virtue (b. 1947), former Associate Artist of the National Gallery, London (2003-2005). These
The stunning retrospective of the works of Jacob Van Ruisdael and the accompanying catalog by Seymour Slive, Jacob Van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape, receive a substantial review in the most recent edition of The New York Review of Books. What Jacob van Ruisdael’s standing was in his own time is
Ben Bernanke will take over next week as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for Alan Greenspan, who is stepping down on Tuesday after more than 18 years on the job. “An extraordinary act to follow,” says Princeton Professor Alan Blinder, the Fed’s Vice Chairman under Greenspan in the mid-1990s, on