[Clive]
Great minds think alike, and all that… John Judis, author of a biography of William F. Buckley, among other titles, has put together his own selection of choice tomes from yesteryear. It’s a long list, and it’s firewalled, but here’s a taster:
Several books are personal touchstones that have shaped the way I think about American politics. Herbert Croly’s "The Promise of American Life" is high on the list, but so is David Riesman’s "The Lonely Crowd". I am still something of neo-neo-Marxist in my overall outlook, but Karl Lowith’s book, "Meaning in History", was among the first to shake my faith…
I have written two books on American foreign policy, but I still feel I don’t know the subject–perhaps because I have little first-hand knowledge of the world outside the United States. I was raised in the Wisconsin School, but on foreign policy, I prefer others to Williams himself, notably Walter LaFeber’s "The New Empire "(about the development of American expansionism in the late nineteenth century), Carl Parrini’s "Heir to Empire" (about America’s attempt to supplant Great Britain after World War I), and N. Gordon Levin’s "Woodrow Wilson and World Politics." The best one-volume biography of Wilson is August Heckscher’s little-known book, which never even went into paperback. The most powerful case for realism is Walter Lippmann’s "U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic", which he whipped off in the summer of 1943.
His comment about foreign travel reminds me that, in an ideal world, America and Europe would swap pundits and commentators for six months every couple of years. That way, we might find a way to speak the same language.
The Dish 