The American Spectator

Andrew Roberts br> I read biographies and history books for a living, and one of the best I have read in the past decade has been Conrad Black’s Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full . By no means a whitewash since Black points out some pertinent character failings of the president, this hugely well-researched, fluidly written, and above all highly intelligent book was a complete pleasure to read. It is long, but Nixon’s astonishing life deserves nothing less, and in Black he has found a generally sympathetic but above all judicious and engaging biographer. /p>

Our very own Bob Tyrrell has also written about a president, but in The Clinton Crack-Up one realizes how far superior Nixon was to Bill Clinton in every possible way (not excluding personal honesty). For the U.S. to allow that couple back into the White House would be a clear sign that moral degeneracy faces your nation.

John Adamson’s The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I posits the revisionist view that it was the aristocracy who destroyed the Divine Right of Kings; a fascinating thesis strongly argued. In Michael Barone’s equally thought-provoking Our First Revolution, it is passionately argued that the template for the Founding Fathers’ revolt of 1776 was the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 in Britain, and it puts that later upheaval into perfect perspective.

A truly gorgeous book for its sumptuous pictures, but also very well written, is Barney White-Spunner’s Horse Guards, a comprehensive 350-year history of the Blues and Royals, Britain’s two oldest and grandest cavalry regiments in the Household Division. A truly sumptuous book, which shows that for all the pomp and circumstance attached to those historic regiments, they are still tremendously effective fighting machines today.

Finally, Norman Podhoretz’s World War IV places the War on Terror squarely into its proper historical, political, and military perspectives, and provides a powerful reason for electing as your next president only someone who instinctively understands these vital truths.

Andrew Roberts is most recently the author of History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900.

p> Larry J. Sabato br> The Prince by Machiavelli (1505). In