A Clarion Call for Liberal Education
Blue Skies: My Life in Many Worlds, by S. Frederick Starr, Dorrance Publishers, 2025. In his memoirs, Edward Gibbon observed that “every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.” By that standard, S. Frederick Starr has done very well indeed. Starr, who was […]
The Vietnam War in Retrospect
LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Failby Peter L.W. Osnos, Rivertowns Books, 2024 McNamara at War: A New Historyby Philip Taubman and William Taubman, W.W. Norton & Company, 2025 Fifty years after it ended, the American war in Vietnam remains controversial. That is because it turned out very differently than had been anticipated […]
Russia and the West: The Economic Dimension
Perfect Storm: Russia’s Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future, by Thane Gustafson, Oxford University Press, 2025 In the final decade of the last century, the end of communism in Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union left three developments in their wake. Together the three promised to […]
A Hero For Our Time
Books Reviewed: Moshe Dayan, the Making of a Strategist by Eitan Shamir, Cambridge University Press, 2025Moshe Dayan, Israel’s Controversial Hero by Mordechai Bar-On, Yale University Press, 2012A New Map – Different Relations by Moshe Dayan, Maariv Library, 1969 [in Hebrew] Moshe Dayan died 44 years ago and is remembered today mainly for his military exploits. But […]
Tribute to an American Golden Age
Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer by David Denby, Henry Holt and Co., 2025.
The Wolf’s Lair in German Memory
Before the Downfall, Hitler’s Years in the Wolf’s Lair by Felix Bohr, Suhrkamp, 2025 [in German]
The Best American Diplomatic Memoir of the Cold War
Foreign Service, Five Decades on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy by James F. Dobbins, RAND Corporation, 2017
Israel’s Forgotten Founding Father and His Continuing Relevance
Israel’s Declaration of Independence, The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Moment
A Case for Annexing the West Bank
One Jewish State, The Last, Best Hope to Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, by David Friedman. Humanix Books, 2024. In late October of 1948, the young state of Israel launched an offensive against the seven Arab armies that had invaded it five months earlier. The Israelis attacked the Egyptian army (including Sudanese, Saudi and Muslim Brotherhood […]
Learning from the Democratic and Authoritarian Leaders of the Recent Past
The Titans of the Twentieth Century: How They Made History and the History They Made by Michael Mandelbaum. Oxford University Press, 2024 Michael Mandelbaum, the Christian A. Herter Professor Emeritus at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has written numerous books on international affairs. A recent work, The Four Ages of American Foreign […]
