Month: July 2015

Defying Hitler: A Memoir (Sebastian Haffner)

“Defying Hitler” is one of those relatively few books (available widely in English at least) that are contemporaneous memoirs of events relating to the Third Reich. Any book, memoir or not, written after the war necessarily suffers from hindsight perception, so contemporaneous material is particularly interesting. (The classic modern example is Victor Klemperer’s diaries, which cover the war and pre-war period.) “Defying Hitler” was written in 1939, covering events in 1933, and was only published after the author’s death in 1999. The title of the book is a misnomer, because Haffner didn’t defy Hitler at all (which is his point).

How Dante Can Save Your Life (Rod Dreher)

Published by Charles Haywood

Rod Dreher’s latest book is a mix of self-help advice, autobiography, and literary exposition. It sounds odd. It is odd. But it works wonderfully.

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (William Easterly)

Published by Charles Haywood

William Easterly is a leading critic of traditional approaches to development—that is, of traditional approaches to bridging the Great Divergence. He, and everyone else studying development, want to know why and how the West and a few Western-influenced countries have become wealthy, and everyone else in the world has stayed poor, despite trillions of dollars spent fruitlessly over seven decades by the West to bring the poor out of poverty.

Coolidge (Amity Shlaes)

Published by Charles Haywood

My conclusion, after reading this book, is that Calvin Coolidge is grossly under-rated. Actually, that’s not quite right, because to be under-rated, you first have to be known. As far as I can tell, nearly nobody in America today knows much if anything about Coolidge. I certainly didn’t before reading this book. Yet not only is Coolidge a fascinating character study, his political life and his Presidency hold important lessons for today. Coolidge was successively governor of Massachusetts, Vice President, and President, covering the period 1919 to 1929. As President, much of his focus was on restoring fiscal stability to the United States after the deficit spending of World War I. He presided over a time of great change in the United States, although the federal government of the time had little to do with the changes, which were mostly technological and sociological. Coolidge was succeeded by Herbert Hoover, who undid most of Coolidge’s fiscal work and presided over the descent to the Great Depression. Perhaps because his life and his Presidency seem to lack …

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (Christopher Hitchens)

Published by Charles Haywood

Typical incisive Hitchens, but marred by his anti-religious obsessions and biases, along with some strange lapses (mis-defining “entail”; mis-using “usufruct”; and others). Also way too much focus on slavery for a book less than 200 pages–it could better have been subtitled not “Author Of America” but “His Views And Actions On Slavery; And Some Other Matters.

Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero (Michael Korda)

Published by Charles Haywood

This is a slight book, but it does not claim to be more. As a basic introduction to the life of Ulysses Grant, once the most famous person in the world and now essentially forgotten, it is very good. I am not qualified to judge the accuracy of the details, of which some other reviewers have complained. But it provides a clear and compelling outline of the man, in his roles as general, President and husband, and serves the important purpose of re-introducing him to modern Americans.