The American Spectator

Feature

Books for Christmas

From the December 2008-January 2009 issue

(Page 2 of 4)

Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. His most recent book is Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Uprising That Inspired America's Founding Fathers (Crown).

CONRAD BLACK

Being a nonfiction writer, my choices always tend to history and biography. With that leaning, I nominate Andrew Roberts’s Masters and Commanders: How Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West (Allen Lane), a just published account of relations and strategic debates between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and their chief military advisers, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke and General George C. Marshall. It utilizes newly opened archives and is a gripping read.

For those who like ante-bellum U.S. history, Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford University Press) and Sean Wilentz's, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (Norton) are very comprehensive and well-written, and an intriguing contrast between Wilentz's unwavering admiration for the Democrats and distaste for the Whigs and grudging toleration of the Federalists and Republicans; and Howe's entirely nonpartisan view of largely the same events. Both perspectives are very well presented.

Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War 1954-1965 (Cambridge University Press) documents the revisionist reinterpretation of the Vietnam War, of what justification there was for it, and how it might have been managed satisfactorily. Only rigorous scholarship would be useful in this field, and Moyar provides it.

For a slight departure, Irving Kristol’s Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (Ivan R. Dee) is much more than its title implies and reminds us of what a formidable intellect and polymath, and often delightful writer, Irving Kristol has been for more than fifty years.

Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (PublicAffairs) and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full (PublicAffairs).

JOE THE PLUMBER

My Christmas Book recommendations are as follows, though in no particular order of priority:

Temples of Convenience--and Chambers of Delight (Tempus Publishing) by Lucinda Lambton. This book came out in the 1990s when I was just getting interested. It shed a great deal of light on the development of the lavatory or, as we say over home, “the hutch.” This book contains pictures of over 150 “hutches,” some pretty fancy ones, though none from Ohio and most the product of non-union labor. The descriptions are good too.

The Theory of Money and Credit by Ludwig von Mises. The book is a 1912 study of monetary theory. It brought monetary theory into the mainstream of economic analysis. It is important reading for these troubled times.

Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper by Wallace Reyburn. And just when you think you know everything about plumbing, this book comes along.

Plumber’s Handbook (paperback, but it is pretty water-resistant) by Howard C. Massey. Readers might find this book a little too technical, but I have learned a lot, particularly on the topics of greasy waste systems, outside waste interceptors, and what for me has been a longtime conundrum, local gas codes.

Joe the Plumber was born in Ironton, Ohio.

HERBERT LONDON

Letter to the Editor