Book Reviews

Americans who are concerned with heightened levels of political violence should understand that we are fortunate compared with Pakistan, whose most visible political family, the Bhuttos, have a history that makes even that of the Kennedys look tame. One survivor, journalist Fatima Bhutto, born in 1982, encapsulates the family tragedies. Her grandfather, the charismatic prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was executed under trumped-up charges by the government serving the man who deposed him, army chief Zia-ul-Haq. Her uncle, Shahnawaz Bhutto, died in mysterious circumstances, possibly murdered, at the age of 26. Her father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, was executed gangland-style outside his home in Karachi during his bid to take power

Personally, I regard Mount Rushmore as an excrescence on the mountain and a monument to the horror that Edward Abbey called industrial tourism. Beyond that, it is an expression of a naive piety and a patriotic sentimentalism that no longer exists in America. Matthew Davis correctly views the presidential sculptures carved into the face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota by Gutzon Borglum in the 1920s and 1930s as very much a period piece, an expression of popular American patriotism in the early decades of the 20th century. His “biography” of the mountain is equally a cultural work reflective of its time. Preeminent among Davis’s concerns

Nicolas Sarkozy’s prison memoir is a slender book about a short sentence that nonetheless makes for compulsive reading. It is unintentionally comic, occasionally moving and almost always politically calculating. This, despite the weight of its author’s self-importance, moral evasions and intermittent self-awareness. Sarkozy, 71, was sentenced to five years for criminal conspiracy linked to Libyan money in his 2007 presidential campaign. He served less than three weeks in Paris’s La Santé prison before being released under judicial supervision to finish his punishment at home, pending an appeal to be heard in March. He used the time efficiently, producing more than ten pages of writing a day. The result is a

The scene is the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill in Rome in the 2nd century. The philosopher Favorinus is waiting to greet the emperor Hadrian when a grammarian corners him and launches into a lecture on the grammatical qualities of the word penus, meaning “provision.” “Well and good, master, whatever your name is,” Favorinus replies wearily. “You have taught us more than enough about many things of which we were indeed ignorant and certainly did not ask to know.” A thousand years later, the Muslim polymath Ibn al-Jawzi tells of an Arabic grammarian, notorious for punctilious use of archaic language, attempting to negotiate with a carpenter. “What is the

This book shouldn’t work. A memoir written by a 60-year-old actress – who, frankly, has never threatened to become a major movie star – hardly sounds promising. Then there’s the author’s personal baggage. Since 2014, Cheryl Hines has been married to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the raspy-voiced Health and Human Services Secretary who served as one of Donald Trump’s chief surrogates during his last presidential campaign. Rarely has a book so straddled the worlds of Hollywood and conservative politics, let alone those embodied by the current administration. Yet, against all the odds, Unscripted is an enthralling read. To address the burning topic first: no, not all of Hines’s friends were

It is no overreaction to look at the current state of western culture, through academia and the arts alike, and to feel that Rome has fallen all over again. Whether it’s a crowd chanting in support of terrorists at Coachella, or a horrific political assassination on a university campus, cheered by some, we are witnessing something far more sinister than a mere surge in political violence. We are watching the collapse of the fundamental preconditions that make civil society possible, as a civilization tears itself apart. Many are of the opinion that it is already too late: that the unique and unprecedented advances in western culture over the past three

Everybody criticizes Wikipedia, but everybody uses it. Having spent my childhood cross-legged on my carpet reading dictionaries and encyclopedias, I found it a revelation and refuge from the get-go. Google could never emotionally compete. While some AI products have become useful knowledge tools, there is still nothing like Wikipedia’s hyperlink paradise, which allows nights to slip away as you click through slices of world history or science. Now its co-founder Jimmy Wales has written a book (with the help of author Dan Gardner) about what enabled this impossible project to become one of the world’s favorite utilities. When reading The Seven Rules of Trust, two things jump out at you.

‘Even when the story is dark, Superman still stands for something — and we need more good guys like that’