"[Sibling strife] tends to have its roots in favoritism by parents...This is the source of a lot of it. And when parents favor one child and really don't think about the other...it really marks people for life," says Jeanne Safer, author of Cain's Legacy: Liberating Siblings from a Lifetime of Rage, Shame, Secrecy, and Regret. ListenShare
Charles Murray on Coming Apart
"If you have a large chunk of the American population...who no longer have the cultural prerequisites for participating in a free society...it's very hard to maintain a republic as America has historically wanted itself to be," says Charles Murray, author of Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. ListenShare
Robert Leiken on Europe's Angry Muslims
"[I]n the case of Europe you've got a lot of children of [Muslim] labor immigrants who come over....working factory jobs...The laborers would...import their own community....Those communities were often very isolated, and that goes back to Europe's...problem with immigration," says Robert Leiken, author of Europe's Angry Muslims. ListenShare
Sally Pipes on The Pipes Plan
“A lot of employers are going to say. ‘...[O]ur employees can get their insurance in these state-based exchanges.’ This completely goes against what president Obama said over and over again: if you like your health insurance, and you like your doctor, nothing will change. Things are changing, and [Americans] are not liking it,” says Sally Pipes, author of The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle Obamacare. ListenShare
Stephen Hunter on Soft Target
"[Americans are] sort of pretending like the war on terror is over.... and everything is hunky-dory, but in fact, what we don't realize is the reason we've gone untouched the last several years is not because we're security geniuses but because we've been lucky as hell. We've managed to kill most of their smart guys, and now we're dealing with their dumb guys, but the one guy we haven't dealt with is the lucky guy," says Stephen Hunter, author of Soft Target. ListenShare
Jim Fusilli on Narrows Gate
"I live five blocks from Ground Zero and [9/11] shook me in a lot of ways...[I]t made me reassess what I wanted to do with my career...Life is so fragile, it can be taken from us so swiftly by fanatics — how should it be spent while we have it? I thought there are stories I could tell as a novelist that go beyond mere entertainment, and those two things fed very much into the stream that led to Narrows Gate," says Jim Fusilli. ListenShare
Ian Ker on G. K. Chesterton
"[Chesterton] was politically a Liberal, although in the end he had abandoned the Liberal Party precisely because of it had become so illiberal, but he is is what we would today call a 'conservative' with small 'c'. Great protector of the family, the ordinary individual...and, of course, a great apologist for Christianity," says Ian Ker, author of G. K. Chesterton: A Biography. ListenShare
Charles McCarry on Ark
"I was just intrigued by something I had read in the press about 15 years ago....Astronomers...discovered that the cores of the Earth...much faster than the rest of the planet...Where is all this energy being stored? And if it's being stored at the center of the Earth, is there a possibility that it could be released to the perimeter all at once?" says Charles McCarry, author of Ark. ListenShare
Michael O'Brien on The Father's Tale
"[Here] a good Catholic father is going out to find his son, who has really chosen a dark path for himself...In that sense, he's like the good shepard: he's going out to seek the lost. In another sense, he's the father of the prodigal son, because his heart remains open...It's really a test of...his own commitment to give his life for his own children. In other words, the essence of what a father is," says Michael O'Brien, author of The Father's Tale. ListenShare
Susan Hertog on Dangerous Ambition
"It's very hard to get our arms around the idea that in the nineteen thirties, Western civilization hung in the balance, and these two women were willing to sacrifice anything, anybody to speak truth to power. And, as a matter of fact, they could and they did," says Susan Hertog, author of Dangerous Ambition: Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson: New Women in Search of Love and Power. ListenShare
Daniel J. Flynn on Blue Collar Intellectuals
"Part of the reason why these blue collar intellectuals...are so effective at speaking to a mass audience is because they come from the masses. A guy like Milton Friedman, who comes from a real working class background, and has had to work, I think that's going to inform his economics. He's not going to have some theory that's up in the ether," says Daniel J. Flynn, author of Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America. ListenShare
Richard A. Epstein on Design for Liberty
"[A] private property system...will do better than any other system to meet the requisites of the rule of law because of the way in which it manages to eliminate political discretion, which I think turns out, in the end, to be the enemy of all stable social institutions," says Richard A. Epstein, author of Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law. ListenShare
Nina Shea on Silenced
"[The Salman Rushdie fatwa] turned out to be the shot across the bow, the first time...that we saw the Muslim world...demand that the West start applying Islamic law on blasphemy to Western citizens within its borders...This was the first real, concerted effort to get the West to adopt these blasphemy laws," says Nina Shea, co-author of Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide. ListenShare
John Lewis Gaddis on George F. Kennan: An American Life
"I knew Kennan well enough...I would tug his sleeve and I would say 'Look what's happening [with Reagan's foreign policy]. Finally, very late in life, after Reagan had left office, I got him grudingly to admit that Reagan had made a significant contribution to the end of the Cold War. But, boy, was it grudging," say John Lewis Gaddis, author of George F. Kennan: An American Life. ListenShare
Daniel Hannan on The New Road to Serfdom
[Barack Obama] is the first president you've had whom we [British] haven't felt we have a kind of natural understanding...This is the first time, as a Brit, that I look at the White House and I think, actually, you know, we could be anybody...Obama downgraded us to "one of our allies"...right out there with Honduras," says Daniel Hannan, author of The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America. ListenShare
Carl T. Bogus on Buckley
"[Conservatism] is a stool that sits on three legs...neoconservatism, libertarianism, and social, or religious, conservatism. It wasn't that way in the early 1950s and earlier. It became that because Buckley was all three things...he really refashioned conservatism in his image," says Carl T. Bogus, author of Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism. ListenShare
Brian Ruckley on The Edinburgh Dead
"[Edinburgh] at that point was just coming to the tail-end...of it's greatest period in a lot of ways...It was one of the great centers in all of Europe for advancement in all sorts of fields — science and philosophy and the arts and agriculture...but it was underpinned by this very dark, very gruesome sort of underbelly," says Brian Ruckley, author of The Edinburgh Dead. ListenShare
Nicholas Wapshott on Keynes Hayek
"The interesting thing to me is how still, particularly in America, the world is sharply divided between those who believe that through fiscal policy...you can interfere with an economy in order to get it out of the doldrums, and...the Tea Party movement...who came to their own view instinctively that this was a very bad thing to do," says Nicholas Wapshott, author of Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics. ListenShare
Sandra Spanier on The Letters of Ernest Hemingway
"Hemingway himself never wanted his letters to be published and in 1958 he wrote out a note to his executors to that effect. But there was such intense interest and it was almost twenty years before his widow...decided to override [his] wishes and...authorize the selected letters, and then twenty more years after that when it was decided to have the complete letters," says Sandra Spanier, co-editor of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 1, 1907-1922. ListenShare
Victor Davis Hanson on The End of Sparta
"I didn't want to tell a story that was well known. All the novels about Alexander the Great, you know everything you need to know from our four ancient sources, but we don't have any really about Epaminondas, nothing really about the battle of Leuktra, nothing about the foundation of Messenia, just scraps and bits here and there," says Victor Davis Hanson, author of The End of Sparta. ListenShare
Burton Folsom on FDR Goes to War
"[Roosevelt's] policy of yielding to Stalin ultimately encouraged and helped Stalin grab much of Eastern Europe after the war and created an environment where the Cold War was almost inevitable," says Burton Folsom, author of FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt, and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America. ListenShare
Michael Bowen on The Roots of Modern Conservatism
"[Thomas] Dewey saw the New Deal Democratic Party as...the way of the future. He thought the Reupblicans would not be able to win the White House back if they had a...traditionalist, pro-business agenda....[Robert] Taft thought that this was going to be political suicide," says Michael Bowen, author of The Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party. ListenShare
Richard Brookhiser on James Madison
"I think [Madison's] lack of physical dash may have made his brilliance easier for people to accept. They were not so threatened by the fact that he had fifty I.Q. points on them because he was short and small. So he was able to insinuate at some times, rather than simply overpowering," says Richard Brookhiser, author of James Madison. ListenShare
John Smolens on The Schoolmaster's Daughter
"Sometimes I think we think all Americans [at the time of the Revolutionary War] were ardent patriots and were opposed to British rule and domination, but the fact is the country as a whole was extremely divided." says John Smolens, author of The Schoolmaster's Daughter: A Novel of the American Revolution. ListenShare
Candice Millard on Destiny of the Republic
"[Garfield] never had, as he termed it, 'presidential fever'...[W]hen he was given the Republican nomination for president, he wasn't a candidate...He had gone to the...convention in 1880 to give a speech nominating another man, but that speech was so powerful and so stirring..everybody just went crazy," says Candice Millard, author of Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President. ListenShare
William E. Simon, Jr. on Living the Call
"Every single human being has a calling. And I think, traditionally, callings were focused on clergy...Actually, lay people are called too. And they're called to be evangelizers of God's word in this world within the context of their own circumstances," says William E. Simon, Jr., co-author, with Michael Novak, of Living the Call: An Introduction to the Lay Vocation. ListenShare
Terry Moe on Special Interest
"Teachers join unions to protect their jobs and to promote their occupational interests, and these interests are not the same as the interests of children...all these things are supported by teachers because they affect and threaten their jobs," says Terry Moe, author of Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools. ListenShare
T. M. Doran on Toward the Gleam
"Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, even though grave issues are at stake, [is] a hopeful story. But there are people out there that feel that books that have hopeful themes are trivial, they're not serious literature, and so I expect that [my book] will also be recieved in that light by some people...I think that kind literature can and has been written, even by people like Evelyn Waugh and Flannery O'Connor," says T. M. Doran, author of Toward the Gleam. ListenShare
Andrew Klavan on The Final Hour
"The Left...convinces people that you can lie reality into submission, that if you don't mention the war...the war will somehow disppear; by not dealing with the threat of Islamofacism and with the...evil of Sharia law, that somehow the Islamic community will be flattered and mollified and will...become less aggressive...The truth is that this is a cancer in Islam and it has to be confronted," says Andrew Klavan, author of The Final Hour. ListenShare
John Yoo on Confronting Terror
"This is a war where information is the most important commodity. It is the weapon...Taking away the ability, or even just the possibility of interrogation, this is actually where I think the Obama administration has harmed the national security," says John Yoo, author of Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. ListenShare
Mary Ann Glendon on The Forum and the Tower
"If politics is only about getting and keeping power...then you get a certain kind of person in political life, quite detached from the Aristotelian notion that politics is also about...free persons deliberating about how to order their lives together," says Mary Ann Glendon, author of The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World, from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt. ListenShare
Nancy French on Home and Away
"It's very possible to live your life and not meet people who've been to the war, and so it makes it hard to talk to people about it politically because no one really has a vested interest in it. When you watch old World War Two movies, the whole country was in on the war effort, and now you can...not know the war was going on unless you looked in the back pages of the paper," says Nancy French, author of Home and Away: A Story of Family in a Time of War. ListenShare
Frederick R. Lynch on One Nation Under AARP
"[The AARP has] become a general social change organization. And indeed, they were one of the primary forces behind the passage of the affordable care act, sometimes known as Obamacare," says Frederick R. Lynch, author of One Nation under AARP: The Fight over Medicare, Social Security, and America's Future. ListenShare
Brad Thor on Full Black
"The idea is that even these operations that exist in the 'black spectrum', that there some that are actually blacker than black, that the most dangerous, the most senstive, the ones that are even kept from heads of state, members of Congress, so on and so forth, are the ones that are 'full black'," says Brad Thor, author of Full Black. ListenShare
Tim Groseclose on Left Turn
"Without the [left wing] media bias, the average voter would think and vote about like the average Texas voter, but meanwhile with the media bias the average American voter thinks about like the average Iowa voter," says Tim Groseclose, author of Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. ListenShare
Amanda Foreman on A World on Fire
"The Civil War was actually one of the great ways that Britain and America were able to work out their differences...by having these tremendous diplomatic rows throughout the war but yet at the same time always remaining connected...It meant that after the war Britain and America were able to kiss and make up," says Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War. ListenShare
Leon Kass on What So Proudly We Hail
"The stories in this book are not about yelling 'U.S.A., U.S.A.' It's an attempt to show America in its depth, with its strengths and its weaknesses...and to think about the kind of virtues that are required to produce a robust citizenry," says Leon Kass, co-editor of What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. ListenShare
Nick Gillespie on The Declaration of Independents
"Libertarians are...often accused of being libertine, just, you know, let anything happen. But in fact there's a huge kind of counter-weight to the idea that you should have more choices and more possibilities and more options in your life, but you also have to have more responsibility," says Nick Gillespie, co-author of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America. ListenShare
David Pryce-Jones on Treason of the Heart
"You have an identity, don't you? And I think that goes for the whole human race. It depends on the language you speak and the place you were born in...and it seems that...you feel that loyalty. If you betray that loyalty...that's a life-changing thing to do...I'm describing people who, really, in the end, hate their own country and hate their own people," says David Pryce-Jones, author of Treason of the Heart: From Thomas Paine to Kim Philby. ListenShare
Naomi Schaefer Riley On The Faculty Lounges
"As one person I spoke to said to me, 'Is it worth saving the jobs of the one hundred conservative in order to make sure we keep the one hundred thousand liberals?' I think the [tenure] system needs to be scrapped. I realize that there will be conservative academics who may be hurt in that process, but at this point I think it is so skewed that it is impossible to justify keeping the system as it is," says Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get The College Education You Pay For. ListenShare
Steve Hamilton on Misery Bay
"I saw this sign for Misery Bay — and it's got a great name, first of all. Talk about being a lonely place: this place, I think, makes Paradise [Michigan] look like a metropolis. It is the single loneliest, most forgotten place I've probably ever been to in the state of Michigan," says Steve Hamilton, author of Misery Bay: An Alex McKnight Novel. ListenShare
Ben Shapiro on Primetime Propaganda
"I interviewed...100 of the biggest names in Hollywood [and] when I said 'Why are there no conservatives in the business?' they said '...conservatives are untalented...conservatives are stupid or they have no empathy'. Of course, all of that is total crap. The fact is that some of the best writers on television today are conservative," says Ben Shapiro, author of Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. ListenShare
Ken Blackwell on Resurgent
"These forces that want to move us towards a country founded on the primacy of the collective and the supremacy of the central government are at direct odds with what the founders intended, because they wanted a country that was founded upon the primacy of the individual and the supremacy of God," says Ken Blackwell, author of Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America. ListenShare
Andrew Roberts on The Storm of War
"Between 1938 and 1944, the number of people working in German war production fell from 39 to 29 million...And at exactly the same time [Hitler] was killing 6 million of the most intelligent, hard-working, well educated, and producitve people in the Reich, namely the Jews," Andrew Roberts, author of The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War. ListenShare
Jonathan Kay on Among the Truthers
"[C]onspiracy theories act as a bridge between...ideology and...reality. [I]n the case of 9/11 you had a lot of left-wing conspiracy theorists who see America as the root of all evil, and when they saw America attacked...they needed some fantasy that would show how this act was actually created by U.S. evil," says Jonathan Kay, author of Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground. ListenShare
Harold Bloom on The Anatomy of Influence
"I think it is fair to say that the best of our students are even abler than their parents or their grandparents, but because we are in a different age now, where we are visually over-stimulated, where the screen has taken the place, to a considerable degree, of the book, it takes them a while to learn how to read more deeply and more comprehensively," says Harold Bloom, author of The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life. ListenShare
Margot Morrell on Reagan's Journey
"[Reagan] often joked that out in the West he was considered to be basically a moderate Republican, but every time he flew across the Mississippi he became what he joked was 'a kook with horns,'" says Margot Morrell, author of Reagan's Journey: Lessons From a Remarkable Career. ListenShare
Eric Felten on Loyalty
"Too much loyalty, or loyalty to the wrong person, and soon we're talking about a vice and not a virtue...Buddy-to-buddy loyalties are the things that make for effective fighting forces and yet at the same time it poses this problem: if your buddy commits a war crime of some sort, do you turn him in? Or do you cover up for him?" says Eric Felten, author of Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue. ListenShare
Andrew Breitbart on Righteous Indignation
"When you are an avowed conservative trying to report the truth, [the mainstream media] are going to try every trick that they can to get the liberal heads of the Columbia Journalism Review, or the Howard Kurtzes of the world to make it appear that somehow that which I am doing...doesn't add up to journalism," says Andrew Breitbart, author of Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! ListenShare
Garry Wills on Augustine's Confessions: A Biography
"[Augustine] doesn't really talk about the things you expect in an autobiography. He doesn't talk about his sister, his brother. He talks about his mother just briefly, when she dies...He was the court orator for the emperor in Milan. Never mentions his activities there, except to say "I was paid to tell lies"...He's not interested in all that. He's interested in internal spiritual growth and struggles," says Garry Wills, author of Augustine's Confessions: A Biography. ListenShare
John J. MIller on The Big Scrum
"[Roosevelt] was a life-long fan of the game. He loved it. He becomes associated later on with 'the strenuous life,' with the notion that vigorous physical activity is good for people, it's good for America, it helps create great Americans. So he's a fan of the game, this prohibition movement to outlaw football is gaining strength, and he's outraged by it," says John J. Miller, author of The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football. ListenShare
Walter Olson on Schools for Misrule
"Law schools are overwhelmingly dominated by a point of view that sees law as a perfect way of reshaping society and accomplishing things without, necessarily, the consent of the people being manipulated," says Walter Olson, author of Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America. ListenShare
Mackubin Thomas Owens on US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11
"Just because you're not going to have a coup doesn't mean that there aren't other issues that are dangerous. The military can do things opposed to what civilians want them to do far short of a coup," says Mackubin Thomas Owens, author of US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11. ListenShare
Douglas A. Irwin on Peddling Protectionism
"The reason why [protectionism is] always...politically salient is that there are always going to be domestic industries or regions of the country that are hurt by imports, and they're going to do anything they can to stop that foreign competition," says Douglas A. Irwin, author of Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression. ListenShare
Del Quintin Wilber on Rawhide Down
"[As they're checking Ronald Reagan's vital signs]...they're already putting tons of fluids into his body through IV lines: that helps increase blood pressure. As this is going on, a nurse can't even detect his blood pressure: it's that low, he's lost that much blood. By the end of the day [he] had lost more than half of his blood volume," says Del Quintin Wilber, author of Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan. ListenShare
Ron Rosenbaum on How the End Begins
"[Suitcase nukes] are veritable pinpricks compared to the power of a U.S. or Soviet nuclear weapon, and the damage they can do is extensive to a city. But you can still have men with haz-mat suits cleaning it up. After a nuclear war [between nations], no haz-mats suits are going to help," says Ron Rosenbaum, author of How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III. ListenShare
Dambisa Moyo on How the West Was Lost
"I think that [U.S.] policy makers have not done a very good job of really explaining to people...how bad things really are and...the sacrifices that need to be undertaken at the individual and household level in order to get the United States back on track," says Dambisa Moyo, author of How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly—and the Stark Choices Ahead. ListenShare
Andrew Ferguson on Crazy U
"There's a lot of reseach now that show kids — in some cases — come out of college dumber than they were when they went in...Any other industry that performed the way the higher education industry in America has performed would collapse," says Andrew Ferguson, author of Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College. ListenShare
Bing West on The Wrong War
"War is won by violence and killing...[W]hen you have Admiral Mullen...consistently saying you can't win this war by killing, he reminds me of a police chief that gets up before a chamber of commerce and says, 'You can't defeat criminality by arresting people. Criminality begins in the hearts of men, and there it must be stopped.', at which point you should fire that policeman," says Bing West, author of The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan. ListenShare
Ralph Peters on The Officers' Club
"At the end of the day, what I want to know about Afghanistan...is, okay, if everything were to go perfectly for us — and it won't — if everything were to go perfectly, what would we get out of it? Afghanistan is worthless. Pakistan matters. But trying to nation-build in Afghanistan, where there is no nation to build, seems to me a fool's errand," says Ralph Peters, author of The Officers' Club. ListenShare
William Kristol on The Neoconservative Persuasion
"[My father, Irving Kristol] was generally very suspicious of doctrines, ideologies, dogmatism, and he thought neoconservatism was a hopeful way to look at America and to look at the world — but [it was] a persuasion, not a dogma," says William Kristol, writer of the foreword to The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009 by Irving Kristol.
"What's marvelous about pictures is that...you see the personality, fully formed, almost from the first shot. There's a kind of poise and grace and cheerfulness and the pictures just convey a sense of personality,"says Peter Robinson, author of Ronald Reagan: A Life in Photographs. ListenShare
Daniel J. Mahoney on The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order
"I simply can't imagine a society that is radically secular or anti-religious that is nonetheless able to sustain liberty and human dignity in any meaningful way," says Daniel J. Mahoney, author of The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order: Defending Democracy against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends. ListenShare
Kevin Williamson on The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism
"[Barack Obama] is a guy who believes in greater level of government involvment in the economy, if not outright government ownership of the means of production, then certainly government control them through regulation, subsidies, and all the rest of it," says Kevin Williamson, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism. ListenShare
E. E. Knight on March in Country
"It would be hard to choose a favorite [vampire book or movie]. I tend to gravitate more towards the one where they're out beating up on the vampires and killing them because I'm always a little more on the side of people like Lucy Westenra in the original [Dracula]," says E. E. Knight, author of March in Country. ListenShare
Stephen Hunter on Dead Zero
"My breakthrough, such as is was, was when I understood after a period of rather orthodox conformity in the '60s as a college student...I realized that that wasn't me...I somehow found the strength to be who I was, and that was A) rather conservative, B) someone who really profoundly enjoyed shooting, and C) someone who believed that it wasn't a privilege, that is was a right," says Stephen Hunter, author of Dead Zero. ListenShare
Dean Koontz on What the Night Knows
"I've rejected Freud entirely...I realized many years ago that I...was writing villains out of a Freudian perspective...I looked...to see who were the greatest characters...in fiction, and they were all pre-Freudian. [T]here's [not a] whiff of Freudianism in Dickens, and...[the characters] are as alive as any you would ever...find in fiction," says Dean Koontz, author of What the Night Knows. ListenShare
Otto Penzler on Christmas at The Mysterious Bookshop
"[A] good, satisfying mystery, with a happy ending, in which the bad guy is caught...is a perfect story for the [Christmas] season...It wouldn't be appropriate for a science fiction story, say, or a western, but for a crime story or a mystery story it fits in with the tone of the season," says Otto Penzler, editor of Christmas at The Mysterious Bookshop. ListenShare
James L. Buckley on Freedom At Risk
"If you want to choose an instrument for solving complicated problems without getting in the way of progress, goverment is basically the last place you would turn," says James L. Buckley, author of Freedom at Risk: Reflections on Politics, Liberty, and the State. ListenShare
Jeffrey Meyers on Orwell: Life and Art
"Orwell showed [in Homage to Catalonia] that the left...were fighting Franco, and the facists, and they were also fighting themselves. And one of the reasons that Orwell turned so much against the Communists is that the Communists were trying to eliminate every other party on the left," says Jeffrey Meyers, author of Orwell: Life and Art. ListenShare
Larry Niven on The Best of Larry Niven
"The spacecraft had gotten good enough, our control of rocket motors had gotten good enough and dependable enough, our computers had gotten good enough and small enough, that...we thought we could shoot down incoming missiles dependably. That gave us the [Strategic] Defense Initiative," says Larry Niven, author of The Best of Larry Niven. ListenShare
Harlow Giles Unger on Lion of Liberty
"[Patrick Henry] was a farmer. He considered the fruits of the soil a gift from God, a reward for his toil and hard work, and he did not believe he had to share a seed or a blade of grass with any government tax collectors," says Harlow Giles Unger, author of Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation. ListenShare
Andrew Klavan on The Identity Man
"I wanted to address an issue...which I...think is the 'Great American Question', which is: how free is a person to reinvent himself? How tied is he to the accidents of his birth and genetics and his race?...Especially in a world like ours now in which...identity politics has become the thing that defines people," says Andrew Klavan, author of The Identity Man. ListenShare
Roger Scruton on The Uses of Pessimism
"The need to hope...will always reassert itself, even when there are no grounds for hope. I'm a child of the '60s and saw all this happening...in which people seized upon the most unreal speculations as to how a new society could be born out of this abundance of the baby boomers and, in pursuit of this, set about destroying everthing that would make it possible to live. That was a very good example of hope springing out of nothing," says Roger Scruton, author of The Uses of Pessimism. ListenShare
P.J. O'Rourke on Don't Vote It Just Encourages the Bastards
"I like [the Tea Party]. I think that it's amazing that we have a populist movement in America that is demanding less government...It is saying 'Roll back, get outta my face, go away' and I think that's just wonderful," says P. J. O’Rourke, author of Don't Vote It Just Encourages the Bastards. ListenShare
Benjamin L. Carp on Defiance of the Patriots
"The truth is that Bostonians had not been very good patriots...While New York City and Philadelphia had been smuggling all of their tea by 1770...the Bostonians were willing to purchase a little bit of the legal tea and pay the duties on it. So they were not as good at being boycotters as the [other cities] were," says Benjamin L. Carp, author of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America. ListenShare
Mary Downing Hahn on The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall
"I think kids like to be scared in a safe way and I think a ghost story fits the bill for that...Even though the story scares them, they really don't think it's going to happen to them. I think because of that they like that little chill," says Mary Downing Hahn, author of The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall. ListenShare
Steven R. Weisman on Daniel Patrick Moynihan
"This is a guy who grew up on the streets of New York, shined shoes, worked on the docks, tended bar, joined the Navy after his freshman year at CCNY, and he never forgot his working-class roots even though he was one of the great public intellectuals of our time," says Steven R. Weisman, editor of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary. ListenShare
Stanley Kurtz on Radical-in-Chief
"I did avoid claiming Obama was a socialist...But...I was looking into these socialist scholars conferences which it became...clear Obama attended...And when I saw the programs for [them] my jaw sort of dropped," says Stanley Kurtz, author of Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. ListenShare
Vince Flynn on American Assassin
"When I created Mitch Rapp, I thought what mentally healthy person decides to become a killer for the C.I.A. or for their country?...I wanted guy...when he decided that someone was a bad guy and needed to be killed, he wasn't going to cry or go vomit in the corner or lose any sleep over it," says Vince Flynn, author of American Assassin. ListenShare
Bernard Cornwell on The Fort
"Paul Revere only ever fought the British once and that was on the Penobscot Expedition. That was the only time he ever acually fought. And at the end of it his own side court-martialled him for incompetence and cowardice...he was anything but a hero," says Bernard Cornwell, author of The Fort. ListenShare
Rochelle Schweizer on She's the Boss
"Early on [Nancy Pelosi] gave her moderates cover...and she was willing to work with them. Once [Obama] got into the White House...she saw...an opportunity for them to really push their agenda, and maybe...she overreached, and we may be seeing the repercussions of that," says Rochelle Schweizer, author of She's the Boss: The Disturbing Truth About Nancy Pelosi. ListenShare
Paul Kengor on Dupes
"Suddenly, we have before us...declassified information that...shows how some people that we thought were liberals and might have been duped, were actually more closet communists who were doing the duping," says Paul Kengor, author of Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century. ListenShare
James S. Robbins on This Time We WIn
"If you look at public opinion, the public really didn't follow the media's lead on Vietnam...[I]n fact...polls showed that the American people wanted to escalate the conflict right after Tet. They understood that the enemy was weak. They wanted to win the war and come home," says James S. Robbins, author of This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive. ListenShare
Thomas W. Young on The Mullah's Storm
"The endgame is up to the Afghans. We are giving the Afghan people an opportunity they have never had before, and it's up to them whether they take advantage of that opportunity. They've got a chance now...to create something for themselves in Afghanistan that's better than anything they've had before...The ball is in their court," says Thomas W .Young, author of The Mullah's Storm. ListenShare
Stephen R. Lawhead on The Skin Map
"[T]his is a [novel] that will challenge a lot of people's conception...of...the creation of the universe, so it's Christian in the sense that it takes a very, very orthodox view of creation, God's role in that...Christians can read it and I hope will find that their understanding of the world around them...is much bigger than maybe they think about day-to-day," says Stephen R. Lawhead, author of The Skin Map. ListenShare
Thomas Sowell on Dismantling America
"Unless [Obama] is stopped...in terms of losing the votes he needs in Congress to pursue his agenda, I see nothing short of one, domestically, losing the freedoms that we have — which he's taking away one by one — and two, internationally, finding ourselves in generations to come living under the threat of a nuclear armed Iran," says Thomas Sowell, author of Dismantling America. ListenShare
Niccolo Capponi on An Unlikely Prince
"[Machiavelli] was the most un-Machiavellian person in the world. Every single political decision he took was wrong...So that [The Prince] was written by someone that miscalculated...is somewhat ironic," says Niccolo Capponi, author of An Unlikely Prince: The Life and Times of Machiavelli. ListenShare
Robert Service on A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism
"Communism doesn't bring about a land of plenty for any peoples. It institutes all kinds of counter-productive and oppressive forms of government, forms of running the economy, that make it incapable of competing with the market economy and democracy," says Robert Service, author of A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism. ListenShare
Justin Vaisse on Neoconservatism
"There is a belief...that America can apply its power for doing good in the world, not only defending its ideals and interests...but also that it can somehow change the world. There is a sort of Wilsonian creed that America can do things in the world that is probably closer to the liberal creed than it is to the conservative creed if you take at a very basic level," says Justin Vaisse, author of Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement. ListenShare
Linda Bridges on Athwart History
"While...Bill and National Review...have not succeeded in preventing certain bad things from happening in the world, nonetheless [they]...have reminded people...of what the core of Western civilziation is all about, what the core of America is all about, what kind of standard we should be aiming for," says Linda Bridges, co-editor of Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations: A William F. Buckley Jr. Omnibus. ListenShare
Richard M. Reinsch II on Whittaker Chambers
"Chambers believes that the West is the losing side because it has broken faith with the central ideas and habits that formed it...This is not someone lost in Hegelian dialectics. This someone who is really looking at the full range of Western thought, and seeing a civilization that's unmoored from what it's supposed to be," says Richard M. Reinsch II, author of Whittaker Chambers: The Spirit of a Counterrevolutionary. ListenShare
Adam Bellow on New Threats to Freedom
"[One contributor] draws a parallel between these well-intentioned, censorious mothers and the Taliban, which has also banned ice cream...The point of the article is not...to accuse liberal mothers in Brooklyn of being Islamofacists, but to bring into relief the problem of the disappearance of...the liberty to do things that are not specifically prohibited," says Adam Bellow, editor of New Threats to Freedom. ListenShare
Laura Vanderkam in 168 Hours
"We have certain impressions of our time that turn our to be not entirely accurate...Most of us have absolutely no idea how we are spending the hours we have...The question is, 'Where do those hours actually go?'," says Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. ListenShare
Brad Thor on Foreign Influence
"The C.I.A is either unwilling or incapable of collecting timely...intelligence in Afghanistan because their operators won't get out into the field. There are some...folks who've gotten together to form their own private group and they've been gathering great intel...it's been very embarrassing for the Agency... I saw [private intelligence collection] as being the next exciting thing in our war against radical Islam," says Brad Thor, author of Foreign Influence. ListenShare
Charles Hill on Grand Strategies
"Literature is, you might say, pre-disiplinary. Great literature takes place above and beyond and before all of the university disiplines got carved into departments. So it is really able to range across all of the various...situations that confront a leader," says Charles Hill, author of Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order. ListenShare
Benjamin Balint on Running Commentary
"That notion of fostering healthy self-respect pervades the magazine...Part of defending one's own as interpreted by the Commentary crowd is setting one's face against American self-abasement," says Benjamin Balint, author of Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine that Transformed the Jewish Left into the Neoconservative Right. ListenShare
Tony Woodlief on Somewhere More Holy
"[E]ating...should be intimate and something that draws families together, and I think one of the great tragedies of the American family is that we have utterly thrown that away, along a lot of other sacred things. we've just thrown it by the wayside," says Tony Woodlief, author of Somewhere More Holy: Stories from a Bewildered Father, Stumbling Husband, Reluctant Handyman, and Prodigal Son. ListenShare
Gabriel Schoenfeld on Necessary Secrets
"In the years since September 11th we really have seen some kind of very reckless behavior from some newspapers, and I think in particular the New York Times...that really has hindered our ability to fight al-Qaeda and defend ourselves," says Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law. ListenShare
Andrew J. McCarthy on The Grand Jihad
"The Center for Constitutional Rights...[defends Al-Qaeda in the courts], while its night job is basically running around Europe, trying to get some foreign tribunal to indict Bush Adminstration officials for war crimes, the war crimes being the defense of the [U.S.] and the war on terror," says Andrew J. McCarthy, author of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America. ListenShare
Ben Wildavsky on The Great Brain Race
"When everbody is competing, when other countries are trying hard not just to send students abroad but to build great universities themselves...basically that means that the pie of knowledge is getting bigger, and that's good for us," says Ben Wildavsky, author of The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World. ListenShare
Robert Alter on Pen of Iron
"The fact of the matter is that the King James version, whatever its faults or limitations, is one of the great stylistic acheivements of the English language and American writers recognized this, and I think some of them still do, even in 2010," says Robert Alter, author of Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible. ListenShare
Victor Davis Hanson on The Father of Us All
"We predicate things now in the schools on race, class, and gender, and we do it as remedies for present angst, and anxieties, and controversies. So history's become melodrama rather than tragedy. That's too bad because we're not fair to the past at all," says Victor Davis Hanson, author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. ListenShare
Alan Brinkley on The Publisher
"[Henry Luce] was not a true conservative, I would say. He was, in fact, something of a moderate within the Republican Party and he supported Wendell Willkie...in 1940 because he thought the other candidates were too conservative," says Alan Brinkley, author of The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century. ListenShare
Lee Edwards on William F. Buckley Jr.
"There's this sense of duty which strikes you over and over and over again...[WFB] could have been the playboy of the Western world, but instead he chose to be — chose to be — the Saint Paul of the conservative movement," says Lee Edwards, author of William F. Buckley Jr.: The Maker of a Movement. ListenShare
Paul Davies on The Eerie Silence
"'[Y]es', [the discovery of extraterrestrial life would pose a particular threat to Christianity],...because Christians alone have a religion in which they claim that God became a human being...in order to save humankind....What happens to...extraterrestrials?...We might be dealing with literally saintly beings. Are they not to be saved too?," asks Paul Davies, author of The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence. ListenShare
John David Lewis on Nothing Less Than Victory
"We've become accustomed today to the idea that...our culture is not better than any others, that it may be worse, so who are we to impose our values on others? Therefore we have not looked to gain absolute victory in any war since 1945 and, consequently, we have not acheived one," says John David Lewis, author of Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History. ListenShare
Michael F. Suarez on The Oxford Companion to the Book
"The physical book will always be important, partly because its bibliographical and social codes — the paper, the size, the binding — all of that signals something about the book and it's important to the reader. And much of that is largely lost...on a Kindle," says Michael F. Suarez, co-editor of The Oxford Companion to the Book. ListenShare
Michael O'Hanlon on Toughing it Out in Afghanistan
"[The Afghans] will...see who they think has the momentum and potentially join forces with the Taliban, if they feel that there's no point in resisting them. [I] think we are at a crucial last opportunity, because if this...continues much longer, a lot of these Afghan fence-sitters I think will go over to the insurgency," says Michael O'Hanlon, co-author of Toughing it Out in Afghanistan. ListenShare
Mark Yost on Varsity Green
"It is clear that when the decision comes down to academics versus athletics, some schools have chosen athletics to the detriment of their overall student body," says Mark Yost, author of Varsity Green: A Behind the Scenes Look at Culture and Corruption in College Athletics. ListenShare
Sarah Ruden on Paul Among the People
"Paul established this idea that the individual...was infinitely precious to God...[T]his made a revolutionary difference in the way society had to treat an individual. Polytheistic society...treated the individual very brutally...Christianity changed all this but it changed it under the authority of Paul," says Sarah Ruden, author of Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time. ListenShare
Diane Ravitch on The Death and Life of the Great American School System
"[C]hoice schools will live or die based on their numbers and they too engage in this phony test prep, which the numbers don't reflect anything that represents what I...would consider real education," says Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. ListenShare
Joseph Frank on Dostoevsky
"[Christian values] were under attack by the radicals of his day, who thought that society could be changed on the basis only of rational ideas. He objected to that. [T]he basis of morality...was fundamentally irrational in the sense that it had to come from...a belief in transcendental values which for him, as a Christian, were extremely important," says Joseph Frank, author of Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time. ListenShare
Patrick M. Garry on Conservatism Redefined
"It's difficult for me to understand what 'compassionate conservatism' is, other than...federal government programs for the poor. And if that's the case, how does it really differ from liberalism?," says Patrick M. Garry, author of Conservatism Redefined: A Creed for the Poor and Disadvantaged. ListenShare
Alex Berenson on The Midnight House
"I don't actually think that what we've been doing over the last eight years is torture...I think when you have lawyers arguing over whether you can keep a detainee at 46 degrees...for two hours, that's not torture. It may be unpleasant, it may be coercive...but let's say what torture actual is, and that's not it," says Alex Berenson, author of The Midnight House. ListenShare
Andrew Klavan on The Long Way Home
"[W]e've allowed our kids...to forget that...there's a reason we believe in liberty. There's a reason we believe in small government. There's a reason we believe in checks and balances, and a reason too that we believe in faith...And these things can be taught again...but we're gonna have to do it. It's not gonna just happen," says Andrew Klavan, author of The Long Way Home. ListenShare
Lars Anderson on The First Star: Red Grange and the Barnstorming Tour That Launched the NFL
"[Red] Grange really sort of introduced the professional game [of football] to fans across the country, and it was because of his popularity that the N.F.L...[has] become what it is today, which is the most popular sports league in the country," says Lars Anderson, author of The First Star: Red Grange and the Barnstorming Tour That Launched the NFL. ListenShare
Wesley J. Smith on A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy
"The very people who deny human exceptionalism in the animal rights movement are asking us to engage in hyper-duties towards animals which would be an act of exceptionalism," says Wesley J. Smith, author of A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement. ListenShare
Robert Crais on The First Rule
"They say every great hero needs a great villain...My contacts in law enforcement have said [members of Eastern European organized crime enterprises] are among the most merciless, hardened criminals they've ever seen. And I thought they'd be an ideal set of bad guys to pit Joe Pike against," says Robert Crais, author of The First Rule. ListenShare
Nick Schulz on From Poverty to Prosperity
"Markets do fail. But just becasue they do fail doesn't mean that goverment needs to jump in and try to correct that. If anything, it's probably going to make things worse," says Nick Schulz author of From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and The Lasting Triumph over Scarcity. ListenShare
Rodney Stark on God's Battalions
"[The Crusades] gave a real spur to Christian Europe recognizing it's ability to confront Islam...It was really quite a feat, if you think about it, trying to sustain a military presence 2,500 miles away with volunteers," says Rodney Stark, author of God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades. ListenShare
Matthew Spalding on We Still Hold These Truths
"Liberty...is the purpose of the whole American founding. [Liberty is] a certain type of freedom, a freedom appropriate to man, as opposed to, say, an animal. Liberty meant a freedom in the sense of being able to govern ourselves," says Matthew Spalding, author of We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future. ListenShare
Thomas Fleming on The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers
"Once we start looking [at the purported Jefferson-Hemmings liason], what seemed like a definitive thing in 1998, has become more and more improbable. And now the best you can do, I think, is to say 'Yes, it's a possibilty, but the probability has dwindled to almost the vanishing point'," says Thomas Fleming, author of The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers. ListenShare
Jonathan Leaf on The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Sixties
"The image that people have of the 1960s is completely at odds with the 1960s that most people lived. And that, to a large extent, is the story the book tells," says Jonathan Leaf, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Sixties. ListenShare
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch on Thrift
"[Thrift] leads us to lead self-reliant, gracious lives but it also in the public dimension has vast implications for the way we spend money as a government...It has to do with fiscal conservatism, something that is almost completely lost in our...public vocabulary," says Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, author of Thrift: Rebirth of a Forgotten Virtue. ListenShare
Terry Teachout on Pops
"I don't think you have to know anything about [Louis] Armstrong as a personality to be drawn to his music...but when you learn about what he went through as a person, you can't help but be stirred and inspired by it," says Terry Teachout, author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. ListenShare
James Bradley on The Imperial Cruise
"[Theodore Roosevelt] made a secret treaty with the [Japanese] prime minister that ceded them Korea. And in a treaty not reported to the State Department...[he] granted...the Japanese military his okay to expand," says James Bradley, author of The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War. ListenShare
John J. Miller on The First Assassin
"What's really fascinating about this period...is that there's so much uncertainty. There were fears that Virginians would [cross] the...Potomac River and invade...[T]here were rumors of assassination plots, of conspiracies...So it was a very harrowing moment in the city's existence and in the Lincoln administration...There were legitmate concerns about the President's security," says John J. Miller, author of The First Assassin. ListenShare
George H. Nash on Reappraising the Right
"I think that conservatism is very much alive but it is facing some challenges, particularly in the long term...[I] certainly do not agree with the facile notion, the dismissive notion, really, that because conservatives lost an election, that they were somehow permanently marginalized," says George H. Nash, author of Reappraising the Right: The Past & Future of American Conservatism. ListenShare
Thomas Mallon on Yours Ever
"The larger matter is whether or not email is killing writing, period, let alone killing letter writing. We write with such haste now, such stylelessness, such overstatement. One of the things that most distresses me about writing on the web...is the premium on overstatement and shrillness," says Thomas Mallon, author of Yours Ever: People and Their Letters. ListenShare
Jack Lynch on The Lexicographer's Dilemma
"Most of these [rules of English] probably describe the speech habits of of some class of people, once upon a time. It will tend to be the upper class of people a generation or two ago. And that's what many people decided proper English is," says Jack Lynch author of The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English, from Shakespeare to South Park. ListenShare
Otto Penzler on The Vampire Archives
"Look, most teenage boys now hang out at the mall, they're a bunch of losers...with their baseball caps on backward. [The vampire hero of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series] is cool. The girls are gonna love him. Why wouldn't they? He just has this one little quirky thing which is that he happens to be a vampire," says Otto Penzler, author of The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published. ListenShare
Mark Moyar on A Question of Command
"Opportunisitc elites are not going to take your side if they think you are losing militarily...the idea that you can win [Afghans] over without the military aspect I think is a delusion we've got to avoid," says Mark Moyar, author of A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq. ListenShare
Brian M. Carney on Freedom, Inc.
"We run our companies...like Stalinist organizations. We control the flow of information, we control the lines of authority, we constrain what our employees can do and the result is that we are missing out on the dispersed knowledge of all of the people that work for us," says Brian M. Carney, author of Freedom, Inc.: Free Your Employees and Let Them Lead Your Business to Higher Productivity, Profits, and Growth. ListenShare
Vince Flynn on Pursuit of Honor
"One thing I would have never believed is that [eight years after 9/11, we] name Dianne Feinstein as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the most liberal, anti-intelligence senators in the history of the United States Senate. And now we are right back to where we were before 9/11," says Vince Flynn, author of Pursuit of Honor. ListenShare
Gordon Wood on Empire of Liberty
"I think that the Americans who went from the Revolution to the early 19th century went through a transformation in their culture and their way of life that was more significant and more extraordinary than the one we've gone through [in the last 50 years]," says Gordon Wood, author of Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. ListenShare
Harvey Silverglate on Three Felonies a Day
"We're gonna have an orgy of prosecutions...[T]he government, which...is going to take no responsibility whatsoever for facilitating any of the disasters that attended the economy...they're going to be blaming individual businessmen, for one type of quote fraud, or another," says Harvey Silverglate, author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. ListenShare
Nicholas Thompson on The Hawk and the Dove
"[Nitze] was a hawk. He was always saying, 'We should build more wepaons'...but his biggest enemies were often on the right. His biggest enemy in the eighties was probably Richard Perle...Kennan is even less of a liberal than Nitze was a conservative...but socially Kennan was a serious conservative," says Nicholas Thompson, author of The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War. ListenShare
E. D. Hirsch, Jr. on The Making of Americans
"I think the education schools...since the early part of the 20th century have uniformly worked against a solid curriculum in the early grades," says E. D. Hirsch, Jr., author of The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools. ListenShare
Norman Podhoretz on Why Are Jews Liberals?
"Conservative Christians have done everything humanly possible to persuade Jews that they are friends. They are probably...more pro-Israel even than the Jewish community and yet it's proved difficult or almost impossible to convince many American Jews that these Christians...have now become their biggest friends," says the author of Why Are Jews Liberals?, Norman Podhoretz. ListenShare
Martin L. Gross on National Suicide
"I would say that in the history of America, the man least equipped to be President of this great nation is Barack Obama...he's very much like a 21 year old college student," says Martin L. Gross, author of National Suicide: How Washington Is Destroying the American Dream from A to Z. ListenShare
Steven Hayward on The Age of Reagan
"Reagan really was an American conservative, which is distinct in important ways from a European or Burkean conservatism. He really embraced the dynamism of the country, which, from certain conservative points of view, has always been problematic," says Steven F. Hayward, author of The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989. ListenShare
Brian Domitrovic on Econoclasts
"It's clear that we're looking at the dramatic expansion of Federal Reserve power and of the tax code, and so that we'll probably have to endure another supply-side revolution," says Brian Domitrovic, author of Econoclasts: The Rebels Who Sparked the Supply-Side Revolution and Restored American Prosperity. ListenShare
Robert Ferrigno on Heart of the Assassin
"The detriment for a nation like ours is in a long war — and this is going to be a long war— in a generations long war, it's not the power of the weapons, it's the power of the faithful that matters, and who loses will first," says Robert Ferrigno, author of Heart of the Assassin. ListenShare
Jay Richards on Money, Greed, and God
"Wealth is created in a market economy, it's not just a static amount that gets divided up and transferred. Once I understood that, frankly from reading people like Thomas Sowell, I realized that socialism rests on a series of really basic economic fallacies," says Jay Richards, author of Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem. ListenShare
Christopher Caldwell on Reflections on the Revolution In Europe
"There is a sort of sad sack, hang dog attitude towards European culture, a kind of loss of confidence. You can say it's understandable, but it's there...I would say the Europeans are totally to blame for what problems they have," says Christopher Caldwell, author of Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West. ListenShare
Greg Garrett on We Get to Carry Each Other
"[Evangelicals] have embraced Bono not because he necessarily speaks their language about redemption and salvation, but because he has been able to come in and challenge the American church to be the church, to do the work that it's called to," says Greg Garrett, author of We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel according to U2. ListenShare
Justine Hardy on In the Valley of Mist
"I've known this family now for...15 years...they've become very orthodox in their following of Islam over that...period...[When] you're surrounded by very violent death all the time...people get...much more intense in their belief systems...which can lead to...very extreme levels of orthodoxy," says Justine Hardy, author of In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir: One Family In A Changing World. ListenShare
Piers Paul Read on Death of a Pope
"Jesus was not a social revolutionary. He was not a Spartacus...I believe the liberation theology is mistaken and has led to much suffering and is a misapprehension of what the Gospel is about," says Piers Paul Read, author of Death of a Pope. ListenShare
Lee H. Walker on Rediscovering Black Conservatism
"As far as how can conservatives pick up the vote of blacks, we had an example of that in April when the same-sex marriage issue lost in California. And that was basically because blacks voted against it. With the majority of the black community voting against it, along with men in the white community, it failed," says Lee H. Walker, author of Rediscovering Black Conservatism. ListenShare
