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Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character by Jack Hitt

On May 21, 2012, in Book Reviews, History, Nonfiction, Social Studies, by Editor

Beginning with Ben Franklin’s kite and leading all the way to the current TV hit American Idol, Hitt argues that the nation’s love of self-invented obsessives has always driven the country to rediscover the true heart of the American dream. Amateur pursuits are typically lamented as a world that just passed until a Sergey Brin or Mark Zuckerberg steps out of his garage (or dorm room) with the rare but crucial success story. In Bunch of Amateurs, Hitt argues that America is now poised to pioneer at another frontier that will lead, one more time, to the newest version of the American dream.

Assignment to Hell: The War Against Nazi Germany with Correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, A.J. Liebling, Homer Bigart, and Hal Boyle by Timothy M. Gay

On May 21, 2012, in Book Reviews, History, Nonfiction, by Editor

In February 1943, a group of journalists—including a young wire service correspondent named Walter Cronkite and cub reporter Andy Rooney—clamored to fly along on a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. Seven of the sixty-four bombers that attacked a U-boat base that day never made it back to England. A fellow survivor, Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, asked Cronkite if he’d thought through a lede. “I think I’m going to say,” mused Cronkite, “that I’ve just returned from an assignment to hell.”

Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens – A History of European Astronomers by Andrea Wulf

On May 21, 2012, in Book Reviews, History, Nonfiction, Science, by Editor

Chasing Venus brings to life the personalities of the eighteenth-century astronomers who embarked upon this complex and essential scientific venture, painting a vivid portrait of the collaborations, the rivalries, and the volatile international politics that hindered them at every turn. In the end, what they accomplished would change our conception of the universe and would forever alter the nature of scientific research.

Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After September 11 by Jack Goldsmith

On May 20, 2012, in Book Reviews, History, Nonfiction, Political, by Editor

Conventional wisdom holds that 9/11 sounded the death knell for presidential accountability. In fact, the opposite is true. The novel powers that our post-9/11 commanders in chief assumed—endless detentions, military commissions, state secrets, broad surveillance, and more—are the culmination of a two-century expansion of presidential authority. But these new powers have been met with thousands of barely visible legal and political constraints—enforced by congressional committees, government lawyers, courts, and the media—that have transformed our unprecedentedly powerful presidency into one that is also unprecedentedly accountable.

Democracy’s Blameless Leaders: From Dresden to Abu Ghraib, How Leaders Evade Accountability for Abuse, Atrocity, and Killing by Neil James Mitchell

On May 20, 2012, in Book Reviews, History, Nonfiction, Political, by Editor

From the American and British counter-insurgency in Iraq to the bombing of Dresden and the Amristar Massacre in India, civilians are often abused and killed when they are caught in the cross-fire of wars and other conflicts. In Democracy’s Blameless Leaders, Neil Mitchell examines how leaders in democracies manage the blame for the abuse and the killing of civilians, arguing that politicians are likely to react in a self-interested and opportunistic way and seek to deny and evade accountability.

The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future by Victor Cha

On May 20, 2012, in Book Reviews, History, Nonfiction, Political, by Editor

With rare personal anecdotes from the author’s time in Pyongyang and his tenure as an adviser in the White House, this engagingly written, authoritative, and highly accessible history offers much-needed answers to the most pressing questions about North Korea and ultimately warns of a regime that might be closer to its end than many might think—a political collapse for which America and its allies may be woefully unprepared.

The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama by Eric Alterman and Kevin Mattson

On May 19, 2012, in Book Reviews, History, Nonfiction, Political, by Editor

The first full-scale treatment of postwar liberalism, The Cause offers an epic saga driven by stories of grand aspirations, principled ambitions, tragic flaws, and the ironies of history of the people who fought for America to live up to the highest ideals of its history.

Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation by Deborah Davis

On May 18, 2012, in Biographies & Memoirs, Book Reviews, History, Nonfiction, by Editor

In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to have dinner at the executive mansion with the First Family. The next morning, news that the president had dined with a black man—and former slave—sent shock waves through the nation. Although African Americans had helped build the White House and had worked for most of the presidents, not a single one had ever been invited to dine there. Fueled by inflammatory newspaper articles, political cartoons, and even vulgar songs, the scandal escalated and threatened to topple two of America’s greatest men.

Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 by Madeleine Albright

On May 13, 2012, in Biographies & Memoirs, Book Reviews, History, Nonfiction, by Editor

The book takes readers from the Bohemian capital’s thousand-year-old castle to the bomb shelters of London, from the desolate prison ghetto of TerezÍn to the highest councils of European and American government. Albright reflects on her discovery of her family’s Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland’s tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation.

The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain by Paul Preston

On May 12, 2012, in Book Reviews, History, Nonfiction, by Editor

Long neglected by European historians, the unspeakable atrocities of Franco’s Spain are finally brought to tragic light in this definitive work. Evoking such classics as Gulag and The Great Terror, The Spanish Holocaust sheds crucial light on one of the darkest and most unexamined eras of modern European history.

Assignment to Hell: The War Against Nazi Germany with Correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, A.J. Liebling, Homer Bigart, and Hal Boyle by Timothy M. Gay

Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens – A History of European Astronomers by Andrea Wulf

Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After September 11 by Jack Goldsmith

Democracy’s Blameless Leaders: From Dresden to Abu Ghraib, How Leaders Evade Accountability for Abuse, Atrocity, and Killing by Neil James Mitchell

The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future by Victor Cha

The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama by Eric Alterman and Kevin Mattson

Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 by Madeleine Albright

The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain by Paul Preston

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