In his 1937 “Great Contemporaries,” Winston Churchill wrote, “Whatever else may be thought about (Hitler’s) exploits, they are among the most remarkable in the whole history of the world.” Churchill was referring not only to Hitler’s political triumphs—the return of the Saar and reoccupation of the Rhineland—but his economic achievements. By his fourth year in power, Hitler had pulled Germany out … [Read More]

Finishing up his autobiography in late 1989, the crushing of that year’s student movement still fresh in his memory, the Chinese dissident Liu Binyan wrote: On the surface, the rulers have attained their objective … China seems to have been cowed into silent submission … The peaceful demonstration at Tiananmen Square was crushed, but it lit a flame in the hearts … [Read More]

ON BOARD S/Y BUSHIDO—Sailing into Athens, renamed “cemento-polis” by green-loving Athenians, can be a traumatic experience, for one’s crew, that is. Coming in from the west, crossing Pireaus, my German cook Daniel could not believe his eyes. “Was ist das? Das ist furchtbar, abscheulich!” Daniel is young, a very good cook and as good a pick-up artist as I have come … [Read More]

“Do you think you could turn the volume down on that war game you’re playing so I can least pretend that you’re listening to me?” So my beloved asked, very sweetly, in her slight Dallas twang. What could I say? “Why sure, Sweetie. Just a second…. Okay, what were you saying?” Of course, she was saying something amazingly feminine, about the … [Read More]

Although this all too brief commentary cannot do full justice to the three works that recently arrived in my mail, it should provide useful information about each of them. The first that came to my hand Wandlungen des Neoliberalismus (Stuttgart: Lucius, 2008), by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung-economic editor, Philip Plickert, was submitted in an earlier form as a doctoral study at … [Read More]

The anniversaries passed with little fanfare in America. No nation really likes to remember its crimes. Stories appeared about the bombings in the German and Japanese press—though both nations feel honor-bound to place them in the context of fascist atrocities which provoked them. But with a few exceptions, the American press has done little to remind us what Allied bombers … [Read More]

As the story goes, Pauline Kael “couldn’t believe Nixon won in ’72,” as everyone she knew voted for McGovern. The quotation is probably spurious, but that makes it no less suitable as an epigraph for cultural life on the Isle of Bagel. And this holds for the New York-centered publishing establishment, which, as Harry Stein explains in his informative article for … [Read More]

Rarely does a writer of serious literature become a newsmaker recognized around the globe. This Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did, and at a single stroke. In 1962 his taboo-shattering One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in Moscow. This short work of fiction by a previously unknown provincial schoolteacher described life in a Soviet concentration camp, which the author knew … [Read More]

Barack Obama just had the worst week since his beloved pastor, Jeremiah Wright, decided to expatiate on black liberation theology at the National Press Club. Coming off his royal progress through the Near and Middle East, Berlin, Paris and London, Barack had surged to a nine-point lead in the Gallup tracking poll. By Friday, he was back to a dead heat … [Read More]

So there I was at the 21 Club, eating raw meat with The Gun Lady….   That was the best journalistic lede I ever wrote—and it never saw print. My editor at a second-tier business paper snipped it right out of the profile I’d done of a high-powered female gun rights activist on Capitol Hill. This large-caliber dowager (she’d dubbed herself … [Read More]