Despite poor reviews from most historians, Silent Cal presided over a robust economy, surpluses, serious reductions in the national debt and generally very good times.
Robert Merry’s new book explores the academic impulse to assess the presidents—but with a twist. He melds contemporaneous judgments of the electorate with academic polls to yield an engaging history.
Robert Kagan has issued a cri de coeur urging Americans to reject calls for reduced U.S. military spending, curtailments in the country’s global commitments and restraint on its interventionist impulses. But his prescriptions are shortsighted.
Richard “The Bulldozer” Holbrooke left a deep mark on U.S. foreign policy. Yet this collection of essays by his friends and admirers, which gushes with praise, leaves out significant elements of the story.
How can an Israeli PM mobilize U.S. politicians against a U.S. president committed to Israeli interests? Beinart's provocative answer: U.S. Jewish leaders commandeered Jewish organizations and turned them into agencies for Likud interests.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a paradoxical man—warm in groups but frosty in person; not an intellectual but steeped in history; a simple man who dominated giants. Jean Edward Smith's tome offers insight into this self-effacing yet effective man.
Rockefeller, Lindsay, Scranton—just three of the “moderates” who failed to keep the GOP from the clutches of Goldwater and Nixon. Geoffrey Kabaservice laments their defeat with a wistfulness that obscures from him their true frustration.
The English-language news channel of Al Jazeera consistently is first on the scene of Mideastern developments, and its journalists provide smart analysis of global events. It may be today’s most influential television-news operation.
George Kennan presents a study in paradox. With penetrating scholarship, John Lewis Gaddis explores Kennan’s complex psychology and provides an intellectual history of the Cold War in his comprehensive and wonderfully written biography.
Benny Morris reviews Gilad Sharon's biography of his father, Ariel Sharon.
