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by Tony Hillerman There are lots of good westerns, but not too many good Western mystery writers. There are even fewer good dramatizations.Turn on the tube and any night you’ll see Belgians, retired English spinsters, medieval English monks, even impoverished food experts. So when I moved out here almost 8 years ago, and wanted to start reading Western mysteries,my only real choice was Tony Hillerman. Luckily. I’ve spent a lot of time driving west of I-25. I been on practically every paved inter-city and interstate road in Colorado,and driven through […]

by Steven Hayward Why should business leaders study Churchill, a political leader. Steve Hayward notes that Churchill’s leadership was primarily during wartime. So he may have more lessons for business leaders, who are always in competition, than for politicians, who more often seek consensus. Compare, for example,Churchill to Herbert Asquith, who was a tremendous peacetime leader, but whose skills were whollyunsuited for wartime. Churchill’s relentless energy and wide-ranging intellect also made him suitedfor basically one position – Prime Minister. That should appeal to aspiring CEOs, who feel stifled in their […]

by Virginia Postrel The Future, argues Virginia Postrel, is not static. It’s not discovered, it’s created. The Clinton Administration sought to capture the public imagination about the future by alluding to the grand engineering projects of the past. “Bridge to the Future.” “Information Superhighway.” “Stairway to Heaven.” (Okay, maybe not the last one.) Postrel insists that these are exactly the wrong allusions. Stairways, if they’re built at all, should act like the ones at Hogwarts, although she’d probably claim that the castle itself was too static. They also suggest another […]

by David Fromkin World War I is arguably the major war both least interesting to and most important to Americans. It’s traditionally viewed here as a European Civil War that we tried mightily to stay out of. It’s frequently argued even now that our involvement was largely unnecessary, Zimmerman Telegram and unrestricted submarine warfare notwithstanding. It was not our great national crusade – that was WWII. Still, World War I created the 20th Century. World War II, the Cold War, post-colonialism and the decline of Europe all flowed from it. […]

by William Langewiesche We think of the ocean as being a lot like the land, only wetter. We can identify ships. They travel in well-established shipping lanes according to well-established timetables. The ships themselves are in good shape, subject to regular port inspections. They fly the flags of recognized countries, which are responsible for their registration, and they have home ports they come back to every so often. We think of ships as big, ocean-going trucks, maybe airplanes, that operate in a well-ordered system. Not a chance, argues William Langewiesche, […]

by Bernard Lewis When Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi declared Western civilization “superior” to Islamic civilization, the vehemence of the reaction was in direct proportion to his accuracy. Mr. Berlusconi wasn’t commenting on the religious validity of Islam, but on the relative successes of Islamic society and Europe. Islam, despite having the dominant civilization for most of the Middle Ages, has been chasing Europe for almost 500 years, falling progressively further behind. The what went wrong informs Bernard Lewis’s lucid analysis of Western rise and Muslim eclipse over the last […]

by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz Adin Steinsaltz is one of the most versatile and wide-ranging writers in Judaism today. In areligion that places a premium on learning, his works are all geared to teaching andencouraging a general audience. After several books on chasidic thought, he returns to theTalmud with a series of character sketches, Talmudic Images. The Talmud is both the source and the model for the Jewish “Great Conversation” of religious,social, and philosophical ideas, and the rabbis are its earliest participants. Its associativeorganization and detailed debates often leave one confused. […]

by Robert Buck If anyone is qualified to write a history of piloting, it is Robert Buck. Lindbergh inspired him to start flying, and he still glides and flies near his Vermont home. He’s been writing about flying since before World War II and is the author of the definitive pilot’s guide to flying through weather. The story of flight in the 20th Century is largely one of the progressive obviation of skills. Technology advanced so quickly that many skills and technologies that were essential in the 1930s are obsolete. […]

by Rabbi Ira F. Stone Rabbi Ira F. Stone of Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia, has been leading Talmud discussions for many years, basing his interpretive style on that of the great French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas, long known in Europe, has recently become the subject of intense American scholarly interest. And while many of Levinas’s works have been available in translations for years, Stone’s Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud is the first major effort to explain him to the general public. Rabbi Stone begins with a “Levinasian Dictionary,” intended to […]

by Bernard Lewis One might think that a 1999 book about the Middle East would be hopelessly overtaken by events. Truly surprising is that a book originally written in 1987 would be so up-to-date. Even then, he noted things that journalists are only now beginning to cite: the growing menace of religious radicalism, replacing nationalism and Marxism, its extensive Saudi support, and the Arab penchant for saying one thing in Englishand another in Arabic. Reading Semites and Anti-Semites now, one understands why Mr. Lewis has gone from being ignored by […]