Public Secrets: Early battles

Subversive Reading

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Infidel
(*****)
Robert Kagan: Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order
Required reading. A brilliant essay on the differences between European and American views of the world and why our interests diverge. (*****)
John H. Fund: Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy
A very important book. It lays bare just how creaky and open to abuse our elections system is, and why reforms are needed now. (*****)
Alexander Vassiliev: The Haunted Wood : Soviet Espionage in America - -The Stalin Era
An interesting if somewhat dry account of Soviet espionage in the US during the 1930s and 1940s. It's amazing how thoroughly penetrated our government was. (***)
Donald Kagan: The Peloponnesian War
Just started this one. I'll review it when I'm done.
Adrian Goldsworthy: The Punic Wars
An excellent survey of the amazing story of the three wars between Rome and Carthage, and of Rome's rise as a Mediterranean power. (*****)
Paul Cartledge: The Spartans
A history of one of the world's first totalitarian states. (****)
Byron York: The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy : The Untold Story of the Democrats' Desperate Fight to Reclaim Power
Despite the lurid title, this is a well-written examination of the Left's efforts to unseat George Bush in 2004, focussing on groups and individuals outside the Democratic Party. (***)
Bruce Bawer: While Europe Slept : How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within
Bawer, a liberal American ex-pat in Norway, warns of the danger Europe and the West face from the growing population of unassimilated, anti-liberal radical Muslim immigrants there. (****)
Martin Gilbert: Winston Churchill's War Leadership (Vintage)
A fascinating essay on the qualities that made Churchill a great war leader, based on a lecture given at the White House in 2002.
Bruce Bartlett: Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past
An extensively footnoted documentation of the Democratic Party's racist past. (****)

July 2009