Book Reviews
Books Reviewed in this Essay: Hannah Gurman, ed., Hearts and Minds: A People’s History of Counterinsurgency (New York: The New Press, 2013) Ivan Eland, The Failure of Counterinsurgency: Why Hearts and Minds are Seldom Won (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013) Gian P. Gentile, Wrong Turn: America’s Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency (New York: The New Press,…
Review of Warren Breckman, Adventures of the Symbolic: Post-Marxism and Radical Democracy by Warren Breckman. Columbia University Press, 2013. 376p. Twenty-five years ago the revolutions of 1989 transformed the political landscape of the Cold War world. Crises were nothing new in the history of Marxism—the dates 1914, 1933, 1956, and 1968 all come to mind—each prompting…
Ebony & Ivy: Race Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities by Craig Steven Wilder
Review of Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013) It has become an article of faith that American exceptionalism starts with our lack of a feudal past. Settled by sturdy farmers and righteous artisans, the story goes, we were spared the long, bloody…
Lost & Found Books is an occasional Logos series reconsidering books that reviewers argue were lost in the shuffle, fell unjustly by the wayside or are otherwise worth a revival. Submissions are welcome but it is wise to propose pieces first.– KJ Lost and Found Books: Dave Van Ronk, The Mayor of MacDougall Street (New…
How could it be possible that the contemporary global financial system remains basically unaltered from its state before the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression? And more pointedly, how could the Left have failed so miserably while the Right has grown stronger and more boisterous than ever? In Never Let a Serious Crisis go…
Books reviewed: Martin Duberman, Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left (New York: The New Press, 2012) Anthony Arnove, Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963-2009 ed. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012) The American Association of University Professors was founded 100 years ago in 1915 to defend academic freedom for professors who were initially under siege…
The Invisible Bridge, the book jacket informs us, “is the story of America on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” Thus are we introduced to the third volume of Rick Perlstein’s exploration of the birth and growth of contemporary American conservatism, centering on the rise of Ronald Reagan. (He has produced other books centering on…
The Brecht Industry rolls on: doctoral dissertations, journals, blogs, websites, YouTube, and memoirs comprising millions of pages, much to the consternation of the boys at the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute, who must be musing on how it is that an ardent anti-capitalist has entranced the cognoscenti and, much like Che, taken the moral high-ground…
Of late, the tendency of media pundits and so-called Middle East experts has been to explain developments in Iraq as being due to factors intrinsic to that country and the region as a whole. They are viewed as being rooted in history, either of recent vintage—that is, as a consequence of the artificial borders set…
At a time when ‘shining’ India seemingly stands poised to become a global economic powerhouse steered by new Prime Minister Narendra Modi, selected by an increasingly impatient and disgruntled electorate, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen’s book, An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions, serves as a timely critical eye-opener for anyone interested in understanding the…
Latest Issue
2026: Vol. 25, No. 2
Latest Issue
2026: Vol. 25, No. 2
Between The Issues
