The American Spectator

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Christmas Books 2007, Part I

12.11.07 @ 12:06AM

From The American Spectator's December 2007-January 2008 issue: Part I of our annual list of holiday gift suggestions from distinguished readers and writers. To subscribe to our monthly print edition, click here.

Tina Brown
Troublesome Young Men by Lynne Olson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). An unexpected page-turner about the group of young Tory MPs whose tenacious rebellion against the despotic hand of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the appeasers leaves you longing for such political courage today.

Nureyev: The Life by Julie Kavanagh (Pantheon). The definitive biography of ballet's greatest star whose ego was as supersized as his talent. Derived from a cache of new letters, interviews, and unseen videos, it's a luxurious winter read, full of Russian theatrics.

Ike: An American Hero by Michael Korda (HarperCollins). America and its allies would likely have lost World War II if any one of a number of generals other than Dwight Eisenhower had been in charge of the combined forces. Korda makes a highly readable case that Ike's particular brand of charm, concealing his secret ambitions, kept prima donnas like Monty, Patton, and Bradley -- and Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle -- on the same team.

The Blair Years: The Alastair Campbell Diaries by Alastair Campbell (Knopf). Invaluable and juicy diary of day-to-day life at Number 10 Downing Street under the British Prime Minister who won an unprecedented three-time Labour victory but finally left office in June 2007 despised by his own people for his stand on the war in Iraq.

John Osborne: The Many Lives of the Angry Young Man by John Heilpern (Knopf). Revealing, funny biography of the playwright whose Look Back in Anger exploded on the British stage at a time when middle-class torpor and censorship were killing the theater. John Heilpern absorbed Osborne's DNA -- literally. When he visited the widow -- whose cooperation he received -- she lent him Osborne's boots for a ruminative walk on the moors.

Tina Brown is an editor and author (most recently of The Diana Chronicles).

M. Stanton Evans
Not having done much current reading for a while, I'm pretty well disqualified from making recommendations of that nature. I'm happy, however, to suggest a list of hardy perennials that ought to be in any well-stocked conservative library, or any other, and would make excellent gifts for people who don't already have them. The ultra-short version of my list, in alphabetical order by author, is as follows:

Whittaker Chambers, Witness.
F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom.
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind.
Frank S. Meyer, In Defense of Freedom.
Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences.

Although there are many more books that might be added from these and other authors, these five provide a good conspectus of the conservative-libertarian thought that fueled the counterrevolution of the 1960s and led to the Goldwater and Reagan political movements. Recommended especially for younger readers -- but for some older ones as well who could use a refresher course about the basics.

M. Stanton Evans is author most recently of Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Major Garrett
East of Eden, John Steinbeck. If Oprah's endorsement (her first literary classic designee) dissuades you, don't give Oprah that much power. There are more precise observations about the strengths and weaknesses of man and mankind in this volume than any book I've ever encountered. Its wisdom is sturdy, unflinching, and raw and, thus, authentically American. This is the only book I've ever read three times, and it's my answer to the age-old question, "Which book would you carry with you to a deserted island?" Not in this life or any other would I subject myself to a tattoo. But if I did, it would be "Timshel."

Lone Survivor, Marcus Luttrell. A Navy SEAL's first-person account of battlefield valor as measured by tactical courage and moral suasion that is uniquely American and, in this case, unimaginably tragic. A story of the barbarism of our enemies and the soul-searing virtue of the warriors we've asked to confront them.

Practical Intelligence, Karl Albrecht. You may never have heard of this author and you may think you're a thinker's thinker. You probably are. But that doesn't mean you can't think more nimbly or more creatively. If fact, thinker's thinkers always can. That's why this book's for you.

April 1865: The Month that Saved America, Jay Winik. Yes, you know the Civil War. Yes, you know Abraham Lincoln's assassination story. But here you discover and feel the pressures on our tender Republic at its moment of maximum vulnerability. Nothing, of course, is static in history. But there are variations in the velocity and frequency of moments freighted with national importance. Never before or since has a single month packed more perils or opportunities or revealed more about the tinsel strength of American individualism, American republicanism, and American resolve than April 1865.

Letter to the Editor

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