Book Reviews

The Little House on the Prairie of Laura Ingalls Wilder

by Wendy McElroy January 1, 2019

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (Metropolitan Books, 2017); 625 pages. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser, is one of the finest biographies I have read, and a fully deserving winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Prairie Fires is the definitive depiction ...

The Boomerang Effect

by Matthew Harwood September 1, 2018

Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism by Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall (Stanford University Press, 2018); 264 pages. On the evening of July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson turned a protest against police brutality into a bloodbath. Angry at police killings of black men nationwide, the Army reservist and Afghan war ...

Private Government in Genoa

by Lawrence M. Ludlow August 1, 2018

Genoa’s Freedom: Entrepreneurship, Republicanism, and the Spanish Atlantic by Matteo Salonia (Lexington Books, 2017); 214 pages. If the city of Genoa had advertised for security services in the 15th century, the job description might have looked like this: Security-Services Wanted Entrepreneurs in the city of Genoa recently fired the king of France and seek a replacement to provide ...

Freedom’s Frauds

by George Leef August 1, 2018

Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty by James Bovard (Future of Freedom, 2017), 184 pages. James Bovard has been a thorn in the side of the statists for decades. His books and columns have exposed the incompetence, hypocrisy, arrogance, and sheer venality of the American political class much as H.L. Mencken did in the early part ...

The Case against Schooling

by George Leef May 1, 2018

The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Caplan (Princeton University Press, 2018, 395 pages). Almost every book on education policy (and I have read a great many of them) springs from the set of assumptions that education “experts” embrace: that schooling builds our stock of knowledge and ...

Nightfall on the American Empire

by Matthew Harwood April 1, 2018

In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power by Alfred W. McCoy (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017). In August of 2007, David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States and director of the Government Accountability Office, delivered a speech remarkable for its plainspoken nature to the Federal Midwest Human Resources ...

A Safe Space to Watch a War

by Michael Swanson March 1, 2018

The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (PBS, 2017) DVD. The documentary television event of 2017 was the 10-part PBS series titled The Vietnam War, directed by both Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The series took 10 years and more than $30 million to make. Released last September, it garnered rave reviews all over the ...

Another Bloody American Century

by Matthew Harwood November 1, 2017

The Violent American Century: War and Terror since World War II by John W. Dower (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017; 184 pages) Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) was livid. “In the dead of night,” the California Democrat wrote on Twitter in July, House Speaker Paul Ryan did something “underhanded and undemocratic.” He stripped out her bipartisan amendment to repeal ...

A Bad Attack on Libertarian Economics

by George Leef October 1, 2017

Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality by James Kwak (Pantheon Books, 2017; 237 pages) There is a nasty genre of writing: books and articles that seek to build the case for socialism and interventionist government policies by smearing those of us who oppose them. That approach appeals greatly to Progressives who think that they are virtuous and their ...

Come You Masters of War

by Matthew Harwood July 1, 2017

America’s War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew J. Bacevich (New York: Random House, 2016; 480 pages) America’s military involvement in the Middle East began in classic imperial fashion, according to military historian and retired Army colonel Andrew J. Bacevich. They had something we needed, and we made sure we had access to it. “Oil has ...

Misguided Attacks on the Rich

by George Leef June 1, 2017

Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy by Robert H. Frank (Princeton University Press, 2016; 208 pages) In 2002, I reviewed an atrocious book for this publication — The Myth of Ownership, by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel. It argued that we don’t really deserve to own anything because society makes everything possible. Therefore, ...

The Abyss Gazes Back

by Matthew Harwood February 14, 2017

The United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists by Peter Bergen (New York: Crown Publishers, 2016); 400 pages. It took only a few hours after two Islamic State suicide bombings ripped apart the departure hall of Brussels Airport and subway cars in central Brussels for Sen. Ted Cruz to offer a “do something” solution to the threat ...