As television has contributed to the decline in the traditional role of political parties, the broadcast media have gained an advantage over print. Politics is now "talking heads" entertainment with questionable standards. This collection, edited by journalists Caldwell (the Weekly Standard and New York Press) and Hitchens (Vanity Fair and the Nation), brings together three dozen reprinted articles (primarily from the Nation, the Progressive, the Weekly Standard, and National Review) by a variety of skillful writers (journalists, novelists, professors, etc.), such as Nat Hentoff, Tony Kushner, Susan Sontag, Benjamin DeMott, Arundhati Roy, Patrick Caddell, Jonathan Schell, Andrew Sullivan, David Frum, Harvey Mansfield, David Brooks, and Jonathan Rauch. The topics, mostly associated with the political wars of the 1990s, are equally diverse, ranging from personalities (Elian Gonzalez, Monica Lewinsky, Dorothy Day, and Bill Clinton) to issues such as impeachment, civil liberties, mass protests, nuclear weapons, Bosnia, feminism, the Bell Curve, and more. Though the writing is high quality, the brief introductions are weak. Supplied with the twist that Caldwell surveys the liberal articles and Hitchens the conservative ones, they fail to explain the purpose of the collection. In a time of tight library budgets, this is an optional purchase.-William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport
A motley collection that illustrates both the obsessions and the daffiness of Right and Left during the '90s. Ubiquitous journalists Hitchens (Why Orwell Matters, p. 1195) and Caldwell (Senior Editor, The Weekly Standard), representing, respectively, the Left and the Right, selected the pieces to represent their own camps, and each wrote the introduction to the other's selections (both are feather-light and forgettable). Not much for surprises here. From the Left come criticisms of our country's support of friendly dictators, of intolerance ("An American society without liberalism," writes Philip Green, "would be a sinkhole of racism, sexism and every form of unabashed bigotry"), of private militias, of child labor, of companies that mistreat workers, of capital punishment. From the Right come attacks on the Clintons and Kennedys (Peter Collier's comments on the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. permit him to scourge the rest of the family, living and otherwise), on Janet Reno (she returned Elian to Communism), on anti-smokers and feminists. Occasionally, there is some overlap. Both sides take on The Bell Curve-Adolph Reed Jr., with skill and erudition; Andrew Sullivan, with surprising and surpassing ignorance. There are also some gems in both segments. On the Left: Susan Sontag's poignant piece about Bosnia (1995); Christopher D. Cook's hard look at "workfare" (1998); Ruth Conniff's discoveries about the feckless "drug war" in Colombia (1992). On the Right: Francis X. Bacon's Shakespearean satire of the Clintons (1994); William Monahan's hilarious rant about the loss of his Right to Smoke (1999); Thomas Fleming's piquant comments on a new edition of Strunk and White (1999). The award for MostParanoid, Racist, and Sexist Piece goes to Kenneth Minogue (2001), who argues that "the radical feminist revolution is nothing less than a destruction of our civilization" and that women and people of color lack the "capacity to innovate." Good bedside reading, with pieces that are short, digestible, and sometimes soporific.
