Walter Russell Mead

Capsule Review
Jan/Feb
2012
Walter Russell Mead

Except in its language, which is uniformly accessible and mercifully free of the jargon that plagues contemporary scholarship, this encyclopedia reflects the atmosphere and the concerns of the contemporary academic community as effectively as Diderot’s encyclopedia reflected the French Enlightenment.

Capsule Review
Jan/Feb
2012
Walter Russell Mead

Fischer gets so caught up with the complexities of the subject that he never manages to pull together an integrated portrait of Hitler’s view of the United States. As a result, this interesting and well-researched book never quite fulfills its potential.

Capsule Review
Jan/Feb
2012
Walter Russell Mead

This is a book that the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street will both reject.

Capsule Review
Jan/Feb
2012
Walter Russell Mead

Future chief justices would do well to read this book in preparation for their duties. The rest of us should thank Stevens for a lifetime of service and for the rarest kind of political book: a genuinely memorable memoir.

Capsule Review
Jan/Feb
2012
Walter Russell Mead

Suri’s core conclusion is sound: nation building is difficult, expensive, and unpleasant, and at best it can be only partially ­successful -- but it is often unavoidable.

Capsule Review
Nov/Dec
2011
Walter Russell Mead

James Madison was among the most secretive of the Founding Fathers; Brookhiser’s engaging biography gives readers a deeper understanding of who he was and what he thought.

Capsule Review
Nov/Dec
2011
Walter Russell Mead

“Oh . . . that mine adversary had written a book,” cries Job. Rick Perry, the Texas governor and Republican presidential hopeful, has done exactly that, and his current Republican and potential Democratic opponents are mining it for ammunition.

Capsule Review
Nov/Dec
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Although Obama’s election made both blacks and whites more optimistic about the future of race relations, Dawson argues convincingly that the road to a truly postracial society remains arduous and long.

Capsule Review
Nov/Dec
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Class Warfare is a gripping account of the fierce combat between reformers and their opponents -- principally the teachers’ unions.

Capsule Review
Nov/Dec
2011
Walter Russell Mead

This hard-hitting examination of the role of Fannie Mae in the housing bubble and the U.S. financial crisis features a clear plot, riveting detail, and a sense of burning anger.

Capsule Review
Sept/Oct
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Coulter’s latest book, a fiery and often ad hominem polemic against all things liberal, provides important clues about what the “Fox nation” is thinking and feeling as the political season heats up.

Capsule Review
Sept/Oct
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Johnston recommends ways that the U.S. foreign policy apparatus can minimize the harm religion can do and, where possible, integrate a deeper religious understanding into both the development and the execution of its strategy.

Capsule Review
Sept/Oct
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Lenczowski has written a quirky book that is part polemic and part prescription.

Capsule Review
Sept/Oct
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Marable asserts that the real life of Malcolm X was sadder and more complicated than the airbrushed version Malcolm’s collaborator, the journalist Alex Haley, put forth in the posthumously completed autobiography.

Capsule Review
Sept/Oct
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Foreman’s instructive history of the American Civil War from the perspective of the United Kingdom is a fascinating addition to the literature on the war.

Capsule Review
May/June
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Kieser, a German Swiss scholar, brings his backgrounds in Ottoman studies and Protestant theology together to offer a rewarding perspective on the complex relationship between the United States and what he calls the "nearest East."

Capsule Review
May/June
2011
Walter Russell Mead

This masterful history of the American South since World War II analyzes the social and economic transformation of a region that within living memory was still William Faulkner territory.

Capsule Review
May/June
2011
Walter Russell Mead

As the United States lurched toward civil war 150 years ago, the political leaders in both the North and the South, Thomas writes in this concise book, were profoundly ignorant of their true situation.

Capsule Review
May/June
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Latham's review grasps the strategic importance of modernization theory to U.S. foreign policy and at times offers penetrating and useful analysis.

Capsule Review
Mar/Apr
2011
Walter Russell Mead

C Street takes readers from the halls of Congress to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and the hotels of Uganda to show the vast conspiracy at work.

Capsule Review
Mar/Apr
2011
Walter Russell Mead

In this finely grained and judicious study, sure to become a classic work of social analysis, two political scientists take the trouble to listen carefully to the religious and political views of ordinary Americans.

Capsule Review
Mar/Apr
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Do Harvard professors of history have a more complex, nuanced, and grounded understanding of the American Revolution than rank-and-file Tea Party protesters? If anybody was in any doubt, The Whites of Their Eyes lays the question to rest

Capsule Review
Mar/Apr
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Bush deeply believes he did the right thing when the chips were down. History will be the judge of that. This book effectively presents him as a sincere man who did the best he could in the face of unprecedented challenges. It was clearly not always enough.

Essay
Mar/Apr
2011
Walter Russell Mead

What does rise of the Tea Party movement mean for U.S. foreign policy? Since today's populists have little interest in creating a liberal world order, U.S. policymakers will have to find some way to satisfy their angry domestic constituencies while also working effectively in the international arena.

Capsule Review
Jan/Feb
2011
Walter Russell Mead

Wilentz brings his professional historical skills together with his appreciation for Dylan's work and for the rich American musical traditions from which it emerged.