Obama has assembled a crack national-security team, filled with sharp minds and even-sharper personalities. Our economic wise men too may be sharp, but with a groupthink typical of a team of neophytes.
Alan Furst recreates the atmosphere of Europe's second Dark Ages (1933-45) as few others have. Today, Western civilization is again under attack, and Furst can teach us a great deal.
A fictional 19th-century detective disdains Russia's intelligentsia and preaches a bourgeois sermon on virtue and responsible citizenship to Russia's nascent middle class.
