Blog Archive

On a day when you get a link from a prominent source, and are flooded with visitors, it might be a good time to post some content. But alas, I was busy yesterday and unable to do so. I hope a few of the couple thousand people who clicked through Monday come back for a second look.

Anyway, here are some of the links I have been enjoying as I try to catch up with my web reading:

- In the American Conservative Daniel McCarthy reviews a book I very much want to read: George Kennan: A Study of Character by John Lukacs. Here is an interesting snippet:

Lukacs sketches his subject’s life and career succinctly and effectively; his book serves as a marvelous introduction to Kennan. But that is not its objective: this volume really is a study in character, “and by ‘character,’” writes Lukacs, “I mean [Kennan’s] conscious decisions, choices, acts and words, but nothing of his—so-called—subconscious; that is, no attributions of psychoanalytic categories, no ham-handed projections or propositions of secret or hidden motives.” The author wants to communicate as much as possible the demonstrated essence of this man who, he writes, “not only represented but incarnated some of the best and finest traits of American character” and to teach us not only that we ought to read Kennan but, more importantly, how to read him. As Lukacs is (a bit too) fond of saying—does he advert to this quote from Burckhardt in each of his 28 books? —bisogna saper leggere, “You must know how to read.”

- Over at NRO Larry Kudlow has a unique idea for summer reading:

I have an idea for all you summertime book worms. In addition to the trendy novels and biographies you plan to stick in your beach bag, why not insert a book on how to do better than most stock market investors? Or a book on how to sound like a seasoned supply-sider when the conversation turns to economics?

If you’re interested, my good friend Victor Canto has written a book that covers both of these topics. It’s called Cocktail Economics: Discovering Investment Truths from Everyday Conversations (Financial Times Press, 336 pp.). The title promises easy entry into what can be intimidating material: economics and investing. On this front, the book does not disappoint. But it offers so very much more.

- The bete noir of the literary blogosphere, Sam Tanenhaus, has an article at The New Republic that I plan to discuss in more detail as soon as I get a chance: The End of the Journey: From Whittaker Chambers to George W. Bush. So read it now so you will be ready when I post.