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by Aldous Huxley Most people know Cardinal Richelieu as the architect of France’s foreign policy during the reign of Louis XIII and the Thirty Years’ War.  Less well-known is his right-hand man, Father Joseph du Tremblay, the subject of Aldous Huxley’s biography Grey Eminence, which has been called the “best book on the intelligence operations of the French state” of that period. Father Joseph was a Capuchin monk, and even before entering politics, a serious mystic, whose successful evangelism seemed merely to take time from his efforts to achieve union […]

Donald Kagan Since it was written, the prism through which we study the Peloponnesian War has been Thucydides’s History. Virtually everything we know about the war, we know through his writing. It was Thucydides who established the first recognizable historical standards, eschewing myth and legend in a way that even Herodotus did not. Thucydides: The Reinvention of History is Donald Kagan’s attempt to apply – finally – the same critical approach to the History as we do to virtually every other historical record. What makes it special is that it’s […]

by Lars Brownworth I’ve always been a sucker for the Byzantine Empire. The eastern outpost of what was once called Christendom, the last remnant of the old Roman Empire, slowly melted away on the maps, until in 1453, it gets winked out altogether. (The timing of that fall also fascinates. It would be only 39 years before Columbus would open up the West, at a time when the East seemed to be closing in.) The Empire would never stop thinking of itself as Roman, the Emperors would always think of […]

by James McPherson On this, the 200th Anniversary of perhaps our greatest President – I’m still holding out for Washington, but perhaps that’s on the basis of his entire body of work – it’s worth considering his role as Commander-in-Chief. Not merely as described in Eliot Cohen’s leadership study, Supreme Command, but his role specificallly in shaping policy, strategy, and operations. Other Presidents have had to fill that role, although none under such critical circumstances as Lincoln. James McPherson, who is rapidly becoming one of our finest popular Civil War […]

by Joseph Epstein “I interest myself.” That was Joseph Epstein’s motto during his 23-year run as editor of The American Scholar. Not a bad philosophy, when your interests are as broad as his. He interests us, too, in his latest collections of essays, In a CardboardBelt! Epstein just turned seventy, so his age has finally caught up with his writing. His essays have always had an air of maturity about them, both in subject and in tone. His two collections of short stories were both about characters a decade older […]

by Edward Erler, Thomas West, and John Marini Last year’s immigration debate left quite an impression on the body politic. It certainly left an impression on the Congressional switchboard operator. But for all the sturm und drang, the discussion barely left the realm of conventional partisan politics. We spent a great deal of time arguing fences and paths to citizenship and ID cards, and very little time on what citizenship means, and what it means for immigration. We again forgot that the Founders thought about these problems when setting up […]

BaseballProspectus.com “Boy, Davis looks fast this year.” “Yeah, but that speed’s overrated.” “Well, he had an EqA of .320…” “Sure, but his VORP was only a quarter of a win.” “And at 29, with no power, his PECOTA has him falling off pretty quickly. Just like the Rockies to overpay for a guy past his prime.” Sounds like a foreign language. Well, except for the part about the Rockies. Welcome to the world of Modern Baseball Analysis. The world of Baseball Between the Numbers, and BaseballProspectus.com. The world that tells […]

by Richard Miniter As countless dot-coms, their VCs, and three large car companies have discovered, buying customers is a lousy business plan. Put that way, it seems intuitive, but not until Richard Miniter’s short but powerful little book, The Myth of Market Share, had I seen it put that way. Most journalists, most bureaucrats, and too many businessmen operate under the delusion that market share is the royal road to profits. In fact, what matters to investors – and therefore, what should matter to management – is return on investment. […]

by Temple Grandin My dog doesn’t like change. He likes the same morning routine, at the same time, all the time. He likes treats to be predictable, although he won’t turn one down, ever. He knows the bedtime routine of treat-sleep. There are days he won’t eat breakfast unless I give him his glucosamine pills first. When I get dressed, he assumes “walk time,” even when I’m wearing a suit. I used to refer to him as, “my autistic dog.” Little did I know. Animals in Translation, by Temple Grandin, […]

by Bill Glover and Himanshu Bhatt Previously, I had the pleasure of reviewing Spychips, a book which looked at the potentially malevolent (well, apocalyptic, reallly) implications of RFID technology. Talk about taking all the fun out a subject. Bill Glover and Himanshi Bhatt have written a perfectly well-ordered discussion of an RFID system. No doubt those banal servants of evil, the middle-managers, will find it useful. One particularly intriguing section describes how, as a technology gains wider adoption, the scale of possible application moves from the company level to the […]