David Frum

06.02.25

Les Miserables

It’s almost obligatory to begin any comment on Victor Hugo with Andre Gide’s famous answer when asked to name France’s greatest poet: “Victor Hugo, alas.”

06.02.25

North and South

“Read nothing but what is truly good or what is frankly bad.” This famous line of Gertrude Stein’s has always struck me as remarkably silly advice.

06.02.25

Hamas vs. Fatah

So many people have opinions on the Gaza war. So few understand it.

06.02.25

Far from the Madding Crowd

Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd takes its title from a stanza of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard.”

06.02.25

A Breed of Heroes

A Breed of Heroes is a war novel, but of a very unusual kind. It is set in Northern Ireland at the beginning of the Troubles.

06.02.25

The Spies of Warsaw

There’s not much to say about Alan Furst’s The Spies of Warsaw. It is not the author’s best work.

06.02.25

Alice Adams

Booth Tarkington: now there is a name with which to terrify a young writer!

06.02.25

Up from History

Up from Slavery, the autobiography by Booker T. Washington, is a book one sees so often quoted in other histories that it’s easy to develop the illusion that you have actually read it.

06.02.25

The Pursuit of Italy

In the past, visitors to Italy typically shrugged off that country’s chronic malgovernment as part of the Italian-ness of Italy.

06.02.25

The Economic History of Italy 1860-1990

Vera Zamagni presents what might be called the classic view in her Economic History of Italy 1860-1990.