I got to know Jeffrey Herf a little in the early 1990s, when he contributed occasionally to the Wall Street Journal on German politics. In those days, I suggested to him a number of books he ought to write.
Negative reviews of Jude the Obscure so jolted Thomas Hardy that he left off writing narrative fiction ever after. For the remaining 33 years of his life, he devoted his literary energies exclusively to poetry.
Kept in the Dark is one of Anthony Trollope’s very last novels, and surely one of his very worst. Written in wincingly melodramatic — and insanely repetitive — style, Kept in the Dark is too boring even to be silly.
The anniversary of 9/11 seems an appropriate day to finish reading my Newsweek colleague Daniel Klaidman’s recent book, Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency.
Rudyard Kipling’s Kim has ranked high on the list of forbidden books for more than half a century. Edward Said’s judgment — “a rich and absolutely fascinating, but nevertheless profoundly embarrassing novel” — actually tilts toward the generous side.
In The Last Mughal, William Dalrymple evokes a lost world: old Delhi before the Indian Mutiny and the ensuing destruction of much of the venerable capital of the Mughals.
When the elder Arthur Schlesinger conducted the first presidential ratings poll back in 1948, a panel of professional historians rated Andrew Jackson a handsome 6th, just behind Thomas Jefferson.