William Safire Books & Reviews

A People of Extraordinary Contradictions

A history of the Hungarians, by a Hungarian, for everyone.

Kaplan's War

Robert Kaplan advocates a pagan ethos for American statesmen in the 21st century, but not all pagans think alike.

The Best Defense

Can John Mearsheimer's analysis of "offensive realism" explain or guide U.S. foreign policy? Better, perhaps, than the author realizes.

The Four Schoolmasters

Walter Russell Mead's new book deploys the ideas and heirs of Hamilton, Wilson, Jefferson and Jackson to illuminate the future of U.S. foreign policy.

Riding the Tiger

Preventing the spread of atomic weaponry is less in our control than we think.

The Guns of 17th Street

A dissection of the few pluses and many minuses of the crusading approach to American foreign policy.

The Pope's Divisions

The Peope who proved Stalin wrong.

The Bureaucrat Spy, Review of Robert M. Gates' From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War

Robert M. Gates entered CIA toward the end of its best years, and the history he recounts of the ensuing twenty-odd years is strewn with untidy crises and a mix of CIA successes and disasters, brilliant insights, and woeful miscalls. Gates describ

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May 26, 2012