The American Spectator : Books for Christmas

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Books for Christmas

From the December 2011 - January 2012 issue

Our annual list of holiday gift suggestions from distinguished readers and writers.

(Page 2 of 8)

Conrad Black

IT IS A particular pleasure to be able, in full conscience, to recommend the books of three friends for Christmas. For topicality as we enter a presidential election year, I suggest After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (Regnery) by the great Mark Steyn, now a cultural and virtually a folk figure. He is one of America’s greatest bloggers, has a huge following for his ever-moving printed columns, actually raises the ratings of Rush Limbaugh when he sits in for him on his radio program, and After America is a fitting sequel for his best-selling America Alone.

This book adopts the parlance of Belshazzar’s Feast that America “has been weighed in the balance and has been found wanting,” from the Book of Daniel. All of the failings of the West have been trotted out hilariously, but in a relentlessly gloomy sequence, and with startling illustrations. In the year following the $800 billion Obama stimulus plan, unemployment grew by 2.5 million, despite the addition of 416,000 federal employees. The failings of the service economy, the erosion of U.S. influence in the world, the onslaught of the “conformicrats,” the impending bankruptcy of almost the entire public sector, the collapsed birthrate, rampant obesity (only Samoans and Kuwaitis are fatter than Americans), are all familiar subjects but are presented here in a novel way, and even the secession of some of the states is not ruled out. Fortunately, just as many readers approach the end of the book and may consider putting themselves on suicide watch coming up to New Year’s, Mark Steyn has some useful suggestions for catastrophe avoidance. It’s a rattling good read.

For uplifting history, to put the reader in mind of how much can be achieved by a motivated West with inspired leadership, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Harper) by the eminent, though youngish, British historian Andrew Roberts, is probably the best one-volume history of World War II now available. The strategic genius of Roosevelt and Churchill in encouraging Stalin to take more than 90 percent of the casualties in fighting Hitler, as between the three major allies, while snatching Germany, France, Italy, and Japan, all hostile dictatorships at the end of 1940, back into the West as democratic allies, is rigorously but very readably recounted. The challenge of presenting such an immense drama without lurching syncopatedly between theaters and between command decisions and grinding it out in combat action, is managed very smoothly by this consummately skilled and fluent historian.

For those minded to observe the Christmas season on a more ecclesiastical note, I recommend Edward Short’s Newman and His Contemporaries (T&T Clark Int’l), a familiar subject approached from a new angle. Newman’s relations with his Teractarian allies as an Anglican and after his reception as a Roman Catholic roll quite effortlessly into his relations with what he called “the talent of the day.” The fear that the British Victorian gentry and aristocracy had of the intellectual seduction of Rome, especially when the temptation was limned out by Newman in all his rigor, brilliance, charm, and articulation, is very striking.

Newman’s reflections on 60 years of British prime ministers, from Peel and Melbourne to Disraeli and Salisbury, are also fascinating. Newman found Gladstone “earnest but unamiable,” but thought Disraeli a somewhat down-market novelist and a political conjurer and sharper, but seemed not to warm to his shared qualities of humor, irony, and flamboyant wit, though he did give him great credit for his diplomatic triumph at the Congress of Berlin in 1878.

Finally, from a recently deceased author I did not know, William J. Stuntz of Harvard, I recommend The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (Belknap), a brilliantly scholarly but highly readable account of the evolution of American justice to its present state of extreme uneven and over-persecution, over-sentencing, racial unfairness, and the severe curtailment of the civil rights guarantees of the Bill of Rights. The pattern is traced carefully, statistically, and historically, but without making the narrative disagreeably dry. And it concludes with some very learned and persuasive practical suggestions for reform.

All four of these fine books will generously reward the Christmastime reader.

Conrad Black is most recently the author of A Matter of Principle (McClelland & Stewart). His earlier books include Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, both published by PublicAffairs Books.

*****

Joseph Bottum

SOME BOOKS are conservative, some books are liberal, and some books can break either way. Tristram Shandy, for instance. If you’re a conservative, Laurence Sterne’s classic 18th-century comedy reads like a conservative romp through a morality tale. If you’re a liberal, it reads like a postmodern deconstruction of the whole idea of morality tales.

For that matter, if you happen to be a Venusian—trembling in the watery depths of the second planet as you wait for the apocalyptic return of the Great Old Ones—Tristram Shandy probably seems a comic ride through the social manners of Venus. Some books are mirrors, and we see in them what we bring to them.

Still, there exist genuinely conservative books—monoliths, instead of mirrors—from Donoso Cortés’s 1851 Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism to Richard Weaver’s 1948 Ideas Have Consequences. Most of them are too well known to require recommending. Do you really need somebody to tell you to take a look at Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom? Or Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind? Or Richard John Neuhaus’s The Naked Public Square? They’re typical Christmas recommendations for young conservatives, books like training wheels for those just starting out in conservative reading.

So here are five lesser-known choices—five books you may not have read, if you’re a conservative, but ought to read, if you’re a conservative. Ought to read if you’re a liberal, as far as that goes, although the odds are that you won’t.

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Letter to the Editor View all comments (16) | Leave a comment Leave a comment

J. Edgar Hodgkins of Ole Miss| 12.14.11 @ 8:37AM

Please allow me, a retired history professor from Ole Miss, to recommend a few of my Christmas selections, dear readers:

TOYS FOR BIG BOYS by Ben Stein. Ben shows off his cars, boats, motorcycles, etc. Lovely photos of Ben barechested in his boat, leather-clad on his motorcycle. This coffee talbe book will appeal to both men and women. $175 Rizzoli.

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED by Margie (a children's book). It's a story about a little girl who loans her lovely doll to her friend, and her friend, in a fit of anger, bashes the doll's head on a radiator pipe. $5.99 Tulip Press.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF DEATH PANELS by Garcia Gomez-Phillipe. A psychological thriller about a man who's been in a vegetative state for 15 years, and the hospital decides to pull the plug. The wife not only objects, but demands that fresh flowers be delivered to her husband's room daily. $29.95 Fascista Press.

WHEN JESUS LAID HIS HANDS ON ME by Ken (Old Texican). Ken tells about the time he pulled a muscle in his right shoulder while helping his friend Margie move an upright piano up a staircase. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but the theme is this: Jesus will answer your prayers if you really believe. $17.50 Glory Road Press.

A SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CHURCH by Miss Alabama. Miss Alabama, an Episcopalian and social and cultural doyenne of the South, writes about the ravenous sexual appetites of Southern Baptist men. Using her husband, Hank, his male friends and relatives, Miss Alabama rips open a sordid social fabric of unbridled sexual depravity. You'll need to turn on the air conditioner before opening this steamy tome. $45.00 Pavlova and Bertolucci.

Betty Jean Dowless| 12.14.11 @ 10:48AM

Can't wait to read Miss Alabama's book. Having been invovled with alot of Southern Baptist men, I can testify to their disgusting sexual appetites.

All I will say is that they left me bruised and battered and leave it at that.

But I could go on and on about their peculiar "tastes."

Seek| 12.14.11 @ 1:26PM

But these men profess Christian piety and virtue. Is there, then, a credibility gap?

Prunella S.| 12.14.11 @ 10:52AM

Betty Jean, honey, a lot is two words: a lot.

Example in a sentence:

I loved Rufus a lot, but he was an unfaithful S.O.B. and got the choir director of our local Baptist church pregnant!

Vern Crisler| 12.14.11 @ 10:58AM

I was a little shocked that Bandow would blame Christianity for the Civil War, but I guess when it comes to purist libertarians, such nuttiness is to be expected. Amazingly, many of these same libertarians are defenders of Southern intransigence, witness the foolish writings of Tom DiLorenzo.

Peppermint Tea| 12.14.11 @ 11:09AM

In order to understand Mitt Romney, conservatives and liberals alike should read Lexi Bjornholt's "My Boyfriend is a Mormon Vampire." Find on amazon.

David March| 12.14.11 @ 11:22AM

My recommended reads,

West of Honor, by Dr. Jerry E Pournelle, a good solid story of a soldier on a far frontier who has a chance to do something right. Pournelle himself was apparently a job at this magazine, so Im sure his work is familiar to somebody.

General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War, by General George C. Kenney. A great story of the pacific war told by MacArthurs senior airman. The Pacific comes alive as you relive the stories of his fights with rear areas, his attempts to keep his planes a fly and his coverage of several areas of battles that are not well remembered in these days of the island hopping campaigns.

A State of Disobedience by Tom Kratman. A story set in the near future when a Democrat Presidents policies leads to an armed insurrection in the south. Very scary and very realistic stuff, a foreshadowing of things to come.

David March is a contributor to a World at War and Against the Odds Magazines. His recent articles included the Mau Mau Insurgency and The Battle of Loos.

Purp| 12.14.11 @ 11:24AM

"The strategic genius of Roosevelt and Churchill in encouraging Stalin to take more than 90 percent of the casualties in fighting Hitler, as between the three major allies, while snatching Germany, France, Italy, and Japan, all hostile dictatorships at the end of 1940, back into the West as democratic allies, is rigorously but very readably recounted. " - Really? Do you really think this lesson was lost on the Soviets? Is this not why they felt justified overrunning Eastern Europe as their prize for so many casualties? How was that strategically brilliant?
Moreover, France was no dictatorship in 1940, where did you get that factoid?

Naturalborn Texicanette| 12.14.11 @ 2:50PM

Book reccomendation:

"Beautiful Outlaw" by John Eldridge

Margie| 12.14.11 @ 8:46PM

Every true Christian ought to read this book on the Reformation. It is being read aloud on Christian radio daily right now. It is the best book I have heard of, ever on the subject.

"The Reformation in England", by By Jean Henri Merle d'Aubigné.

Originally published in 1866, reprinted by Banner of Truth Trust, 1972.

"The introductory material in Volume 1, Book 1 is especially interesting as it deals with the planting of apostolic Christianity in Roman Britain, its later subversion by the forces of the Papacy, and the beginnings of reformation in the work of Wycliffe and the Lollards. This is great history and the reader is encouraged to read and study those events that in God's providence were used to reestablish apostolic and Biblical Christianity among the English speaking peoples." ~americanpresbyterianchurch.org.

Titles of some of book one chapters:

CHAPTER 1 Christ Mightier than Druid Altars and Roman Swords
CHAPTER 2 Iona versus Rome
CHAPTER 3 Rome "Converts" Britain
CHAPTER 4 The Conflict with Papal Supremacy
CHAPTER 5 The Iron Age of Spiritual Slavery
CHAPTER 6 Grosseteste and Bradwardine
CHAPTER 7 Light Streams from Lutterworth
CHAPTER 8 The Morning Star of the Reformation
CHAPTER 9 The Lollard Burnings
CHAPTER 10 The New Learning and the New Dynasty
CHAPTER 11 War, Marriage and Preaching
CHAPTER 12 Wolsey’s Rise to Power
CHAPTER 13 The Need for Reformation

Jesus is LORD~ Merry Christmas christians!

Sister Anna Maria Spiccata| 12.14.11 @ 9:06PM

And Merry Christmas to you, Margie.

Take time to listen to "Ave Maria," Shubert's version, and meditate on our Blessed Holy Mother as you drink in the divine melody and lyrics.

Margie| 12.14.11 @ 9:13PM

I prefer Handel's Messiah.
The lyrics are all from the Bible, which do not include any such "Holy Mother." That's bunk, and I never did go for bunk.
Merry Christmas Troll~ oh, and remember to keep the CHRIST in Christmas!

Nick| 12.14.11 @ 11:57PM

Margie,

Why are you promoting the Presbyterian church? I thought you didn't believe in denominationalism?
Aren't Presbyterians also a bunch of lying Papists? Isn't RCV a Presbyterian?
Merry Christ's Mass, and God Bless!

Vlady| 12.15.11 @ 9:03AM

"remember to keep the CHRIST in Christmas!"

Even better, it seems old Margie is promoting the Knights of Columbus.... Isn't that one of their yearly things, keeping Christ in Christmas?

POST American| 12.15.11 @ 1:02AM

"Understand, religion is the KEY
to history. Among the Christians, ONLY
the Calvinists possessed the faculty for
self-government, and ONLY the Calvinists
would fight."
-Lord Acton

"John Calvin was America's REAL founding
father."
-George Bancroft
America's First Historian
1830

SO, start grabbing that Geneva Bible,
start downloading that John Gill, John Bunyan
and John Calvin.

START cleaning out your churches or staring your own.

Make a defintive break with RED China wampum, franchise slum X---Miss.

---------YOUR LIFE NOW DEPENDS ON IT---------

Vasu Murti | 12.24.11 @ 3:23PM

(The folk song below receives airplay on KFOG 104.5 here in the SF Bay Area during the holiday season.)

"Well, Jesus was a homeless lad
"With an unwed mother and an absent dad
"And I really don't think he would have gotten that far
"If Newt, Pat and Jesse had followed that star