David Frum

06.04.25

Barnaby Rudge

Barnaby Rudge is one of the less read novels in the Dickens canon.

06.04.25

The Mugwumps

To the extent that anybody remembers them at all, the Mugwumps of the 1870s and 1880s get predominantly negative press.

06.04.25

The Jewish Enemy

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.

06.04.25

Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad

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

06.04.25

The Riddle of the Sands

The Riddle of the Sands is often described as the first spy novel in English. It certainly gives Kim a run for the money.

06.04.25

Five Germanies I Have Known

Fritz Stern is truly a great historian. His 1963 book, The Politics of Cultural Despair, brilliantly studies the dangerous intellectual prehistory from which Nazism emerged.

06.04.25

Will the Boat Sink the Water?

“Have you ever been to China?” Before I read Will the Boat Sink the Water?, I thought I could at last answer “yes.” Now I realize I must be more cautious.

06.04.25

Kim

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.

06.04.25

Dead Certain

Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush, scored an amazing coup in gaining six hours of interview time with the president shortly after the 2004 presidential election.

06.04.25

In Praise of Prejudice

Theodore Dalrymple is the pseudonym of Anthony Daniels, a British prison psychiatrist well known I think to NRO readers for his dark, intimate views of the bottom of British society.