Books

Alice B. Lloyd on parting words: After all, tomorrow is another day.

Danny Heitman on a pocket-sized collection of Christmas cheer.

Fletcher Knebel’s ‘Night of Camp David,’ re-released this week, is tamer than reality.

How J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis defied the spirit of the age.

Danny Heitman on the slender volumes of Notting Hill Editions—treats for the mind.

Lots of books on politics come across The Scrapbook’s desk, and most, if we may speak with brutal honesty, aren’t to our liking. Often we can’t even make it past the titles. You know the ones we mean. Grand Theft: How a Band of Know-Nothing Media Magnates Is Stealing Your Liberties—and What You Can…

Amazon-owned AbeBooks announced that they would no longer host sellers from multiple countries, prompting the response.

News that P. G. Wodehouse will at last get a memorial stone in Westminster Abbey in London will warm the hearts of Wodehouse fans. For some years after the Second World War, the British government treated the writer with disdain, owing to the mistaken belief that Wodehouse had willingly…

He built the first one in 2009. Now there are 75,000 of them.

Tracing sexual politics and women’s rage in the Trump era.

Andrew Ferguson reads the Trump-era bestsellers so you don’t have to.

The author of a new book on the tool’s legacy describes its almost mythical authority.

A vinyl pressing gone missing—and greatly missed.

Alice B. Lloyd reviews Abdi Iftin’s memoir presenting a case for the green card lottery.

The Scrapbook spent its August break last week tuning out the news and turning to a pile of books we’ve been meaning to read—from the old (Charles Portis’s The Dog of the South and Gringos, which we enthusiastically and unreservedly recommend) to the new, our friend Irwin Stelzer’s fascinating peek…

B.D. McClay on Sheila Heti’s ‘Motherhood’ and taking control by giving it up.

The hometown briefing.

Just like the woman herself.

David Skinner, taskmaster.

This Fourth of July, as is my wont, I will bring down from the shelf my well-thumbed copy of What So Proudly We Hail and therewith touch off a semi-controlled bacchanal of patriotism in my little household. I do this as a civic duty and to set an example for my countrymen. The indispensable Karlyn…

Social Creature, a female-driven society noir, is a chilling summer read.

Also: What Robinson Jeffers can teach us today.

Also: Will the Voynich manuscript mystery ever be solved?

Lionel Shriver does not want to write books in which people only say the right thing. She is pushing back against prudence.

Harper Lee’s inspiration in creating Atticus Finch.

The Pulitzer-winning novelist leaves newly ordained rabbis feeling isolated with his ranting about inclusion.

Eric Felten's long-ago summer reading.

Psychedelic exploration for the NPR set.

He predicted the moment in which we find ourselves.

It's not that I agreed with their ideas. It's that they encouraged me to think.

Also: Rodin and the art of ancient Greece, and more.

Also: Medieval abbeys, the first recording of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and more.

By happy coincidence, on the very day that ex-FBI director James Comey published his self-serving memoir, my wife and I happened to be rummaging around in the George C. Marshall research library on the campus of Marshall’s alma mater, Virginia Military Institute, in Lexington. It was entirely…

Customers were sparse, but reporters plentiful, at a midnight sale of Jim Comey’s new book.

A chance meeting with Keith Bowden, writer of "The Tecate Journals."

In 2005, as readers may remember, Democratic senator Barbara Boxer published a novel, A Time to Run. The book was a flop, largely owing to its confusing plot, sick-makingly sentimental prose, and the obviously self-serving tone of the whole story. The story’s protagonist, Ellen Fischer, is an…

There may be no better showcase for the sociopolitical contortions our culture’s made in the last two decades than what the #MeToo ethic makes of the campus novel Blue Angel, by Francine Prose. Recently adapted—honestly but shallowly—into a movie starring Stanley Tucci under a toupee, the limited…

New from the publishing industry: Crimson Romance, Simon & Schuster’s “diverse romance” imprint, recently announced on Twitter that it will close. The Book Riot blog reports: “The Ripped Bodice, a Los Angeles romance bookstore whose owners recently published a report on the state of diversity in…

On Saturday mornings, I make eggs and bacon for my four children and wife—usually a dozen eggs and most of the package of bacon—before shoveling the kids into the car, hopping into the driver’s seat, and pretending my minivan is a Mustang so that we get to catechism class on time. By the time I…

The question of who deserves an obituary has long vexed editors at newspapers and magazines. Should they limit themselves to the most well-known public figures or dig deep into the less well-known but often fascinating lives of the hoi polloi? Do you cover the lives of the notoriously awful as well…

Publishers have long supported specialty imprints that feature particular kinds of books: There are imprints that promote conservative books, such as Sentinel at Penguin Random House and Threshold at Simon & Schuster, and imprints that promote genres like romance (Flirt at Random House) and cooking…

In 2003, when J. M. Coetzee was announced the recipient of that year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, the news wasn’t met with outraged cries of “Who?” or “Why?” With nine brilliant novels under his belt, along with a haul of prestigious literary awards—including a hitherto unprecedented two Booker…

A half-century after her death, Carson McCullers is best known for The Member of the Wedding, her 1946 novel about a motherless 12-year-old girl who watches the planning for her brother’s nuptials and feels distanced from the rest of the family. Adapted for stage and screen, McCullers’s story is…

The Polish poet Adam Zagajewski was born in the ancient capital of Lvov, but cherishes no early memories of the city. Lvov was occupied by the Germans at the time of the poet’s birth. After the Red Army occupied the city at the end of World War II, Zagajewski’s family was forcibly repatriated—or…

Every week we ask interesting people what they think President Trump should read. In the past, we've talked with Harvey Mansfield and Ben Shapiro, among others. This week we spoke with Charles J. Sykes, best-selling author of How the Right Lost Its Mind.

Ursula K. Le Guin, who died on January 22 at the age of 88, lived most of her adult life in Portland, Oregon, where she and her husband Charles—who taught French at the local university—quietly brought up their three children. I suspect that Le Guin, who herself majored in French at Radcliffe, must…

It’s Virginia Woolf’s 136th birthday, meaning she’s had plenty of time to finish her description of the child orbiting the lake by foot and how it brings to mind the circular nature of life. After all, the kid made it just five steps, and it was a century ago.

The Iranian political demonstrations now under way have roots in the Arab Spring upheavals that began in December 2010 in North Africa. The starting point was Tunisia, the rare success story of the Arab Spring—despite two major terrorist attacks in 2015 and this week’s protests against austerity,…

Presumptive 2020 Democratic front-runner Oprah Winfrey is responsible for unleashing any number of ills on the world: Dr. Phil; James Frey; The Butler. But give her credit for this: In the aggressively philistine world of reality television, Winfrey has been a lone voice stressing the importance of…

While you sift through all the end of the year Best Books/Movies/Moments lists, they can present a daunting task. You had high ambitions about how much reading you would get done throughout the year and set an over optimistic Goodreads challenge. Now you have mere days to meet a yearlong goal, and…

Is it perverse to find ghost stories relaxing, even restful? Compared with the grim realities of the news and the appalling horrors of the last hundred years, even such outstanding classics as M. R. James’s “Count Magnus,” Sheridan Le Fanu’s “The Familiar,” and Algernon Blackwood’s “The Listener”…

Of the many things that a young fellow, barely knee-high to a grasshopper, might aspire to be when he grows up, one that doesn’t often come to mind is “grifter.” Yet in my early 20s, intoxicated by the demimonde allure of pulp novels by Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford, I was reminded of a time…

Fiction finds itself in a curious position in 2017, when the favored form of disparagement is to accuse opponents of peddling fake news. But fake news is a nearly perfect characterization of a good novel or short story, and fiction writers have proudly refined its production to an extent that makes…

Some historians talk about a “reading revolution” in the middle of the 18th century, during which literacy rates rose and people came increasingly to prefer reading silently over reading aloud—mainly novels, a relatively new literary form. In The Social Life of Books, Abigail Williams, a professor…

At this very moment, I trust, a novelist somewhere is trying to weave Russia’s election-year meddling into the stuff of fiction. (I wish Keith Thomson would take it on.) Meanwhile, one of the most interesting literary stories of the last decade has gone mostly unnoticed—and this too, so it happens,…

We can speak of “settled law.” Not so with biography. The verdict is always out on appeal, and the subject accountable to more litigation. Discovery yields new evidence, and additional litigants take up the case. This is especially so with Ulysses S. Grant.

There are many winners and losers amid the current political turmoil. Among the losers is the publishing industry. Indeed, The New Republic would like to know, Is Trump Ruining Book Sales? They posit that given the attention the administration demands with its many entertaining twists and turns,…

I spoke with Peggy Grande about her new book, The President Will See You Now, a look back at her work as Ronald Reagan’s executive assistant.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. possessed the most sparkling intelligence of his generation of historians. He may not have had the most subtle or profound mind, but his was the most effervescent disposition, and no one could surpass him in sheer energy, knowledge, and skill as scholar and writer.…

Attention all history buffs and antiquarian booksellers: The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, a recently founded center at Arizona State University, is in the market for great books relevant to American political philosophy and civics. They’ve already acquired a first collected…

In 1637, René Descartes recounted a “fable” of how he came to think well. From his youth, he had read the books of the ancients, exercised his rhetorical skills, and observed the debates of philosophers and theologians. But in all this learning he found no rest or certainty, only endless disputes…

In August, your humble Scrapbook noted an alarming New York magazine article about how the world of teenage novels is now rife with “culture cops, monitoring their peers across multiple platforms for violations.”

Over at Commentary, our own Andrew Ferguson has a review of the “spiritual memoir” by Washington doyenne Sally Quinn, Finding Magic. Hoo boy, is it a doozy. “The book or the review?” you ask. Both. Read for yourself:

Justice Scalia was a terrific writer. And he thought about the craft, and what it requires. A short speech titled “Writing Well,” given to a group of legal writers who were giving him a lifetime achievement award, is fantastic.

As I was leaving the theater after a screening of Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, the friend I watched it with turned to me and observed, “For a documentary about a library, that movie didn’t have a whole lot to say about books.”

In recent years, John McPhee’s writing has become more retrospective, a natural sensibility for a man now 86 years old. A case in point was his 2010 book Silk Parachute, a collection of essays and reportage that also stood out for its uncharacteristically personal tone. From the title essay, a…

As I was leaving the theater after a screening of Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, the friend I watched it with turned to me and observed, “For a documentary about a library, that movie didn’t have a whole lot to say about books.”

On the same day last week, two Democratic women published political memoirs. One was a frank and engaging tale of butting heads with the media and doing battle with an upstart populist progressive. The other was written by Hillary Clinton.

Now that the latest season of Game of Thrones has ended, fans of the show may be wondering: What now? How do I fill the void? One could, of course, reread George R. R. Martin’s books, or check out Maurice Druon’s The Accursed Kings, a series of seven historical novels that partly inspired Martin.…

Thanks to the success of book series such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, the young adult, or YA, fiction market has become lucrative and culturally influential. With that in mind, New York magazine recently did a feature on the bevy of online critics whose opinions can make or break authors…

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, deputy online editor Chris Deaton talks with Eric Felten about Arizona Senator Jeff Flake's new book taking on Donald Trump, Conscience of a Conservative.

Last week, Amanda Nelson, managing editor of book blog Book Riot, claimed to have definitive proof of “systemic bias” in the publishing industry. Apparently, the Book Riot editors put their lab coats on and tracked all the unsolicited galleys sent to them by publishers for possible review for “a…

Novelist Curtis Sittenfeld will be recasting Hillary Clinton's life in a bizarro world where Ms. Rodham might have met but never married Bill. The same Bubba who softened her hard heart, we're to understand, hardened the last glass ceiling over her head.

During my teaching days, along with courses on Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Willa Cather, I taught an undergraduate course called Advanced Prose Style. What it was advanced over was never made clear, but each year the course was attended by 15 or so would-be—or, as we should say today,…

During my teaching days, along with courses on Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Willa Cather, I taught an undergraduate course called Advanced Prose Style. What it was advanced over was never made clear, but each year the course was attended by 15 or so would-be—or, as we should say today,…

Up on the third floor, in a bookcase against the south wall—the second shelf from the bottom, maybe two-thirds of the way along—there's an aging copy of The Art of Memory, written by the British historian Frances Yates back in the 1960s.

Sixty-five million dollars is a lot of money for a book that Barack Obama said he would have written anyway—a labor of love, and part of a narrative to "train the next generation." He has a lot to say, a "writerly sensibility" primed to be set loose on the page. And, helpfully, the (so far)…

What makes a meaningful life? It's an often strenuous, and in no way uniformly happy, existence compelled by service to some higher calling—higher, anyway, than selfish gratification. It's also an explainable life, simple enough to be told back to you as a story, but it keeps in touch with the…

The other day, I happened to click on to Amazon and read their top 100 best-selling books for that hour. As I read the list, I was shocked to note—fully understanding that as a conservative, time has passed me by—that 5 of the top 100 books had the f-word in the title.

What if a computer program revealed what people want to read, even down to the punctuation? It could tell the likelihood of any given book becoming a bestseller. It could tell whether a given book had been written by a man or a woman. It could even tell who wrote it, as long as there was a large…

In the latest issue of Commentary, WEEKLY STANDARD senior editor Andrew Ferguson reviews the latest nonfiction offering from Tom Wolfe, The Kingdom of Speech. Here's an excerpt from the review:

The historian Jeffrey Herf's profound new book shows that German-animated left-wing terrorism targeting Israel was not a tactic but rather part of a long-war strategy to destroy the Jewish state. Academic study and journalism on the now-defunct East German Communist state and radical West German…

Reviews and News:

At the beginning of the baseball season, we announced in the Kristol Clear newsletter a contest in which you had a chance to pick the teams that would make the World Series, and the winner. We've got the entries, are dutifully keeping track as promised, and the payoff will be YUUGE.

Tevi Troy, a WEEKLY STANDARD contributor, historian, and veteran of the George W. Bush White House, has a new book out—Shall We Wake the President?: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office. The book is a fascinating look at a crucial, and sadly overlooked, aspect of policymaking.…

We need to talk about Lionel Shriver. On September 8, the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin and several other novels gave the keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers' Festival. Shriver had wanted to talk about "fiction and identity politics," but the organizers asked her to talk about "community…

We need to talk about Lionel Shriver. On September 8, the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin and several other novels gave the keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers' Festival. Shriver had wanted to talk about "fiction and identity politics," but the organizers asked her to talk about "community…

Many readers will doubtless be familiar with some of the tales of intimidation told in Kimberly Strassel's The Intimidation Game: How the Left is Silencing Free Speech. Strassel's great accomplishment is to bring them all together in one place. She identifies a national phenomenon and fleshes it…

John McPhee's five-book Annals of the Former World tracks the author's geologic journey across the United States, at the fortieth parallel, on Interstate 80, using the highway's exposed rock "roadcuts" to peek into North America's geologic past. McPhee's trip was broken into five books,…

“Words matter."

By now it's well known that almost no one was interested in publishing J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book. The author has saved those rejection letters, stashed away in her attic. Later, when Rowling was looking for a U.S. publisher, the only taker was Scholastic Press. Numerous publishers…

As America and THE WEEKLY STANDARD celebrate the first 100 years of the National Parks Service, worth a read is writer John McPhee's five-book series Annals of the Former World, a geologic history of the United States that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. McPhee began the series more or less by…

Uri Bar-Joseph is a professor of political science at the University of Haifa and a former intelligence analyst in the Israel Defense Forces. His just published book, The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel, is the remarkable story of how Cairo playboy Ashraf Marwan betrayed his father-in-law,…

Powell's Books, which bills itself as the world's largest independent bookstore, is a Portland, Oregon, institution. (Though I've always been more partial to nearby Cameron's.) Its popularity among Portlanders ranks up there with bikes and beer. But now Powell's finds itself in direct conflict with…

This is not another glowing review of the universally-praised Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance's first-hand account of the problems facing the white working-class in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Not because I don't like the memoir—along with apparently everyone else who has read it, I found the memoir…

The novelist Roger L. Simon is the author of, among other works, the Moses Wine crime novel series, and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter for his screenplay of Enemies: A Love Story, the 1989 movie based on an Isaac Bashevis Singer novel. Simon was formerly the CEO of Pajama Media and now serves as…

As you've heard, it's healthy to exercise, socialize, volunteer and get enough sleep, to the point of extending your life. Now a new study indicates that reading books can keep you alive longer as well. So if that's your inclination in the heat of August and you have time at a beach or beside a…

During his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Donald Trump offered a litany of malevolent actors that could be blamed for America's "moment of crisis": "government incompetence" and "leaders who fail their citizens," an Obama administration that has "failed them…

What's weirder, praising Donald Trump's feminism or denouncing first-female-presidential nominee (it's historic, haven't you heard?) Hillary Clinton's anti-feminist ways? Moreover, when both presidential nominees are evidently "gender neutral" in their self-serving blind ambition, who really cares?

This past weekend, Wall Street Journal books editor and WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor Robert Messenger reviewed MacArthur at War in the pages of WSJ. This latest history by Walter R. Borneman focuses strictly on the Pacific theater during the Second World War and reappraises the actions of…

Michel Houellebecq has a show of his own art photography opening in Paris on June 23—the day Britain votes on whether to leave the European Union.

In New York's May 30 issue, Rebecca Traister's sprawling adoration of Hillary Clinton wades into the candidate's inner world, revealing that "she presents as … a nana," "sounds just like my mother," to know her is to love her ("she is so different one-on-one")—and a bit about what she's been…

Technology has made the world run faster, increased productivity, and given us more stuff. Governments have organized themselves into massive institutions built to run more and more programs on behalf of citizens. And yet, for all this creation, our brave new world often seems cold,…

Reuters recently reported that the United States would sail a third ship near the Chinese-built artificial islands in the South China Sea. It would be difficult for the Obama administration to telegraph more clearly it has absolutely no interest in China's new islands. Or, for that matter, Russia's…

I'm a speed reader—a certified speed reader, certified ever since I was in junior high school and passed a genuine speed-reading course. An Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics speed-reading course, no less.

Social media mavens would have us believe that print media is dead, killed off by the innovative disruption of onscreen newspapers, magazines, and ebooks. But it turns out that pockets of print and print lovers still exist. Part of print’s survival is psychological. In the case of books, body…

President Obama’s hour-long conversation with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, published in two parts in the New York Review of Books, inspired responses that were so hyperbolic and adoring, it felt like 2008 all over again.

Banned Books Week, the American Library Association’s annual self-advertisement, has now ended for this year. Bookstores will disassemble their earnest displays of “banned books,”and the semblance of normality will return to public libraries. And we will be left with the sobering thought that, in…

Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has long lived as a literary recluse, famously dodging publicity associated with her classic work. After Mockingbird’s publication, she never wrote another novel. The author’s decades of silence (she famously turned her back if anyone mentioned her work…

Americans have long been skeptical of the liberal arts. Frequently this takes the form of a discussion of whether a degree in history or literature is “worth it” in a purely economic sense. Annual reports highlight the top-earning college majors, subtly encouraging students to forgo a class in…

The latest New York Times bestseller list has Ted Cruz's A Time for Truth at number 8. Just above him is former President Jimmy Carter's A Full Life, coming in at 7. 

Fareed Zakaria, CNN’s foreign policy touchstone, has officially entered what is passing for the “culture wars” in American education with his new book, In Defense of a Liberal Education. Zakaria argues that the mode of education known as the liberal arts is in peril, and purports to offer a robust…

The speed with which the transgender agenda is moving may end up making the same-sex marriage debate look slow and deliberative by comparison. And now Scholastic, the children's publisher that specializes in distributing and selling books through schools, is poised to bring the issue to a middle…

Jonathan Last and Steve Hayes joined Kennedy on Fox Business to talk The Dadly Virtues: Adventures from the Worst Job You'll Ever Love:

Speaking of global warming, The Scrapbook could have used a little more of it this winter. Meanwhile we’ve been bundling up against the cold and curling up next to the fireplace with our favorite new book, Jay Cost’s A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.…

Not long ago, Harvard Law School's Charles Ogletree told Politico that Eric Holder "is a race man":

ISIS continues its war on civilization by burning:

The Scrapbook is pleased to note that Philip Anschutz, chairman and CEO of The Weekly Standard’s parent company, has just written a book that not only adds some authorial luster to our own ranks but makes a genuine contribution to our understanding of America. Out Where the West Begins: Profiles,…

In a press conference with reporters today on Capitol Hill, Harry Reid described what he's been up to since injuring his face and ribs in an exercising accident:

It's been almost five years since Obamacare was passed, and the law remains as unpopular as ever—public support hit a record low of 37 percent in November. Opposing Obamacare is a no-brainer for Republicans politically, though the question of what to do about the law remains something that divides…

Mosaic has just published Menachem Begin’s Zionist Legacy, by Michael Doran, Daniel Gordis, Douglas Feith, Hillel Halkin, Meir Soloveichik, and Ruth Wisse.

Andrew Cuomo's book is a dud. The memoir, released last week, has sold 945 hardcover copies in its first week of sales, Amy Chozick of the New York Times reports.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Books & Arts Podcast with Philip Terzian, on the October 13th Issue's Books and Arts section.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the latest on the airstrikes against ISIS and the efforts to discredit Leon Panetta after he criticized the White House on foreign policy in his new book.

“Chemistry and Physics Get Million from Loeb,” blared the Harvard Crimson headline. “Funds will modernize laboratory facilities and establish chemistry chairs.” The donor: scientist Morris Loeb ’83. A million dollars is indeed generous. But on the Harvard scale, did it really warrant a Crimson…

Florida Polytechnic “University” (it isn’t accredited) is making headlines this week by opening a bookless library. Instead of checking out traditional codex books, students will be forced to read class material on tablets, e-readers, and/or laptops. According to the middle-aged librarians and…

Erica Payne, founder and president of the left-wing Agenda Project, is encouraging people to deface the cover of Paul Ryan's new book, which is hitting shelves today.

Craig Shirley, a prominent biographer of Ronald Reagan, has accused historian Rick Perlstein of plagiarism in his new book, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. Shirley has cited 45 instances in which he says Perlstein uses information and passages from his 2004 book,…

It’s hard to know what to make of Lincoln Dreamt He Died. On reading the title, my first irreverent thought was: Hey, safe bet. My second: Contrary to popular myth-ology, many of us dream of our own deaths—and guess what? We’re prophetic! Then I studied the subtitle and worried some more. Was this…

Certain amusements appropriate to childhood or adolescence have established a beachhead in adulthood, or its 21st-century American simulacrum. Grown men and women indulge, with or without shame, in video games, fantasy football leagues, sitcoms, online porn, comic books, and movies based on comic…

Our affable colleague, senior editor Victorino Matus, is famous for his big head, big heart, big appetite—and encyclopedic knowledge of food, drink, the consumption of same, contemporary German politics, and the sociology of his native New Jersey. Vic’s attention to detail, and mastery of English…

In a new report on a bizarre email sent to dozens of reporters over the weekend, the Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove explores "The Strange Leak of the New Expose 'Clinton, Inc.'"

Vodka: How a Colorless, Odorless, Flavorless Spirit Conquered America, written by senior editor Victorino Matus, is out today. It's available on Amazon here. 

When I sat for my SAT exams as a high school senior, I thought to myself, “This is the last standardized test you will ever have to take!” I had never considered myself an intellectual and was vaguely distrustful of anyone who chose the cocoon of the academy over the rough-and-tumble of the “real…

Back then, it was not known as World War I, for the obvious reason that the Second World War still lay in the future. It was simply the Great War, for the world had never seen anything like it.

In the history of art, self-portraiture constitutes a world of its own, presenting us with moods ranging from the lighthearted to the sordid. There is sheer delight in Rubens’s painting of himself and his first wife Isabella Brant in a bower of honeysuckle bliss; acute menace when Caravaggio decks…

The New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton's published, Simon & Schuster, isn't likely to sell enough books to make back her hefty advance.

In the long, tortured history of race in America, there are few bright spots shinier than the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Democratic and Republican reformers from across the country overcame the resistance, mainly of Southern segregationists, to pass legislation that broke the back of Jim Crow. In…

Reports have surfaced of a professor with a mania for self-examination. His line of inquiry, however, is not of the Socratic philosophical sort. An expert in computer science, he is collecting data on his bodily functions. To improve his diet (and reduce his weight) he tracks what he eats down to…

The virtues of Stanley Payne, the outstanding living historian of the Spanish Civil War, are on gratifying display in this comprehensive volume. He writes with appropriate sweep: “[C]ivil war in Spain was not a complete anomaly, but rather the only massive internal conflict to break out in Western…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast withe editor William Kristol on Hillary's second horrible week in a row.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she's done being "carefule about what to say." She made the comments at a recent book event associated with her most recently published memoir:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the roll out of Hillary's new memoir.

Hillary Clinton signed books earlier today at a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan. A number of people came out to get their copy of her newly released memoir signed. 

Hillary Clinton explains to Diane Sawyer that after leaving the White House she and her family "struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea's education." That's why Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill Clinton have made over $100 million since leaving…

The Scrapbook keeps an eye on the British press—largely because it’s interesting, and sometimes fun, to read; but also because, now and then, a little nugget emerges which tells a larger story. 

Hillary Clinton's book roll-out has been discussed at the White House. Clinton, and her former boss, President Obama, apparently were able to settle on a simple message in the meeting between surrogates: "Obama's team of rivals became an unrivaled team."

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a book coming out next week. Today, her publisher released images from the back cover of the book. The pictures mostly show Hillary meeting global leaders and attending important meetings.

Vice President Joe Biden is not making too much money off his book Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics. Last year, in fact, he made less than $201 in royalties from his book publisher, according to just-released disclosure forms.

Ben Carson is warming to the idea of running for president. Since the famous brain surgeon retired last year from Johns Hopkins Hospital, he’s been speaking around the country to enthusiastic audiences. And they’ve affected his thinking about seeking national office.

Timothy Geithner, the former secretary of the Treasury Department, says the White House wanted him to lie in scheduled appearances on the Sunday TV talk shows. As Geithner writes in his new memoir:

Next month former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy will publish his book Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment. And already the Democratic party is trying to raise money off the title.

I'm pleased to report that I’ve just returned from the Evanston Public Library saleroom empty-handed. The saleroom is off the main lobby and contains used books, donated to the library, which sell for a mere 50 cents. Not all the books in the saleroom are serious—junky novels predominate—but a fair…

The title of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's new book will be Hard Choices, Simon and Shuster announced this morning:

White House spokesman Jay Carney plugged his wife's book today at the White House press briefing: 

The Scrapbook is delighted to commend to readers a new ebook from our contributing editor Joseph Bottum. Nativity: A Christmas Tale “re-imagines Melchior, the Wise Man who brought gold, as a wealthy cancer patient adrift in the American Midwest, picking up a menagerie of strays as he fights his way…

Stephen Jimenez sounds remarkably chipper on the phone when he calls in from Portland, his thirteenth city on a seemingly endless book tour. He’s plugging The Book of Matt, and the reason he’s chipper is that he hasn’t been burned in effigy, yet, or heckled mercilessly, yet, or denounced, at least…

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is out, today, with her first book.  In his Politico Playbook, Mike Allen calls it a "D.C. Must-Read."  Which, if true, is the most depressing news to come out of the Imperial City so far this week. But, then, it is only Tuesday.

I'm showing my age again, but I can remember, just barely, when we had the war between men and women. Not a war, but the war: eternal and (of course) metaphorical, a fight without massed ranks of infantry or elaborate flanking maneuvers or formal parleys among belligerents. The opening salvo dated…

It's a thankless job, being a political aide. Your every prerogative and responsibility derives like planetary light from the combustion of your supernova, the Great Man or Woman who has brought you into his (or her!) orbit and whose gravitational field guides and sustains you. The connection isn’t…

Andrew Ferguson reviews Mark Leibovich's This Town in the Wall Street Journal:

Andrew Ferguson reviews George Packer's The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America in the latest issue of Commentary: 

Kenneth Minogue, longtime professor of politics at the London School of Economics, died Friday, age 83. He was a leading conservative political thinker of our time—no, he was a leading political thinker, period, of our time, whose classic, The Liberal Mind, written a half century ago, remains must…

As a “millennial” (i.e. one born between 1980 and 2000), I’ve grown used to reading descriptions of myself – written, always, by those much older than I – that I don’t recognize. It’s a bit like hearing my voice on tape – can that really be me? So take, for example, the trendy idea that people my…

An unexpected thing happened at tonight's state dinner in Senegal: President Sall reunited President Obama with a character who appears in his book, Dreams from My Father. Via the pool report:

State Department employee Anne Smedinghoff was killed in Afghanistan last weekend. At first reports suggested the young diplomat was part of an armed convoy that was bombed, but new reports say that she was actually on foot. And that the group she was with got lost on its way to deliver books.

The death of Evan S. Connell last month prompts reflection on an American original who, over a lifetime of steady work—many volumes of novels, stories, biography, essayistic speculations—left as his permanent contribution to letters one brilliant, memorable book: the novel Mrs. Bridge, published in…

This week Russian president Vladimir Putin brought Boyz II Men to Moscow to "hopefully [give] Russian men some inspiration ahead of St. Valentine's Day," according to the Moscow Times. That is, Putin brought the music group to town to encourage love-making, and, he hopes, baby-making to offset…

Soon after 9/11, Michael Totten abandoned a profitable career as a technical writer and started a blog that took him throughout the Middle East, including Iraq which he visited seven times from 2006 to 2009. He also lived in Lebanon in parts of 2005 and 2006 in the middle of the Cedar Revolution,…

I happened to read Michael Connelly's first mystery, The Black Echo, when it was published twenty years ago. I've been a fan every since. His books are now bestsellers, but it's always a nice feeling to have discovered someone (or something) before everyone else did—even if one deserves no…

Despite its Luddite tendencies, The Scrapbook is sufficiently au courant to be aware that many of its readers are no longer packing canvas bags of paperbacks for their summer vacations but loading up their e-readers of choice. So let us recommend to the non-Luddites that they download contributing…

Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, releases his new book The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise today. As you may have guessed from the title, the book is sort of the inverse version of The Road to Serfdom. Given all that is going on…

The Scrapbook has been reading, with great interest and profit, not one but two stellar recent publications of that stellar journal, National Affairs.

Roger Kimball remembers Hilton Kramer:

Leon Wieseltier, writing in the New Republic:

Buzzfeed flags this passage from Michael Hastings new book The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan. It seems that as a Presidential candidate visiting Iraq, Obama didn't exactly make enough time to welcome and thank the troops:

For those interested in things Jewish, the formidable literary critic D. G. Myers has provided a terrific guide to the 38 best Jewish books of 2011, ranging from Jewish history to thought to literature. I’ve long been an admirer of Myers, but I must admit I’m even more of one now, thanks to his…

The great novelist John Updike once said he’d gotten to know so many writers over his years in the literary world that it limited the books he agreed to review. He didn’t feel comfortable criticizing the books of friends or acquaintances.  Updike said this, by the way, in a conversation with Nieman…

Fred Barnes reviews ACC Basketball by J. Samuel Walker in the Wall Street Journal: 

The main reason I wanted to read Prime Time, which is Jane Fonda’s latest book—there have been others—about Jane Fonda, is because of its cover. On the right-hand side, next to a large color photograph of the actress, her lips painted the precise color of her sweater (tangerine) and her hair…

ABC News: Earthquake!

New York Times: "Obama Urges Voters To Scold Republicans"

In time for summer, two dispatches of interest from the world of publishing.

In time for summer, two dispatches of interest from the world of publishing.

At English department parties of many moons past, or so I have been told, once all had become properly snockered, a popular game commenced in which everyone confessed to what he or she hadn’t read. The game had a crescendo quality as the intellectual stakes rose. “I’ve never read Christopher…

The Triumph of Conservatism

Big Business Progressives, from TR to ObamaThe Triumph of Conservatism, By Gabriel Kolko

Big Business Progressives, from TR to Obama

Big Business Progressives, from TR to Obama

Is there anything more irritating than that predictable sigh, so often heard from the trendy anti-gentrification crowd, that New York was so much better, so much more authentic, when one couldn’t walk through Central Park without fear of sexual molestation; when Times Square was an outdoor brothel,…

Is there anything more irritating than that predictable sigh, so often heard from the trendy anti-gentrification crowd, that New York was so much better, so much more authentic, when one couldn’t walk through Central Park without fear of sexual molestation; when Times Square was an outdoor brothel,…

One of these days when Hollywood needs a break from the superhero genre, they're going to make comic book movies out of Greg Rucka's fantastic Queen & Country books. Based on a small British MI6 team of agents, Queen & Country might be the most realistic spy series done in the last 20 years: The…

Who doesn’t love an animal logo? Allen Lane knew that, in 1935, when he published the first 10 Penguin books in London. The six pence paperbacks arrived in bookshops sporting the avian logo and no other graphics, just broad bands of color at the top and bottom. General fiction had orange bands;…

Almost anyone who went to a high school in the United States has probably read Lord of the Flies. But very few have read anything else by William Golding. Michael Dirda reviewed William Golding: The Man Who Wrote 'Lord of the Flies' by John Carey last summer in the magazine, and the review is…

Stalin’s Genocides

The Alice Behind Wonderland