Presidential aspirants frequently talk about restoring America’s international influence, but this monumental task will require a lot more than glittering generalities.
With great power comes great responsibility. But Washington is adrift and our country in search of a strategy. Foreign-policy heavyweight Les Gelb wittily channels a master to update the classic realpolitik definition of power.
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.
