Michael Johnson
An American Spectator in Paris by Joseph A. Harriss (Unlimited Publishing, 328 pages, $17.99) Some professor once said we should show humility when trying to describe national cultures, they are so complex. I hate that idea. What’s most amusing about…
Okay, we all know that the London Olympics were successful and full of great surprises. Good for the winners, bad for the losers. But toward the end, it was getting more and more difficult to concentrate on fractions of seconds…
With the possible exception of the egregious Geraldo Rivera, I cannot think of another television interviewer who has stirred emotions quite the way Mike Wallace did. I knew him slightly, sat for an interview that was never broadcast, and witnessed…
“I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling in going on in here,” says Captain Renault in the film Casablanca as he collects his winnings and shuts down Rick’s Café. That famous line — now a common metaphor for hypocrisy…
Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial DreamBy Gregg Jones(New American Library, 430 pages, $26.95) The story of the Spanish-American War has its roots in Guantanamo Bay, in scandalous…
The Founding Fathers vs. The People: Paradoxes in American DemocracyBy Anthony King (Harvard University Press, 242 pages, $35) Some of the more cherished American articles of faith take a real beating in a new critique of U.S. institutions by a…
George F. Kennan: An American Life By John Lewis Gaddis (Penguin Press, 784 pages, $39.95) One of the more poignant moments in the massive new biography of George F. Kennan describes him leaving the State Department in Washington for good….
America has been marathon-mad for decades but after you have run a few of them they begin to seem a bit ho-hum. At least for me. There are currently hundreds of active marathons in U.S. cities, with more than a…
On Evil By Terry Eagleton (Yale University Press, 176 pages, $16) “The devil seems to have all the best tunes,” says Terry Eagleton, paraphrasing a frustrated London pastor from 1844. No surprise here, Eagleton explains. To fend off the Evil…
As our youngsters continue to be outscored by Asians and Europeans in basic subjects like math and reading, some middle school teachers are resorting to a seemingly desperate measure — allowing chewing gum in the classroom as a performance enhancer….
