Douglas A. Jeffrey

Oct 28, 2024 | claremontreviewofbooks.com | Daniel Mahoney |Will Thibeau |Douglas A. Jeffrey |Christopher Caldwell

Simone Weil (1909–1943) was one of the great souls of the 20th century. She was flawed in many respects, but she possessed a rare and admirable sensitivity to things of the spirit. Though she came from a comfortably bourgeois family of French Jews and graduated from the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, she deeply sympathized with the afflictions of the poor.

Oct 14, 2024 | claremontreviewofbooks.com | Jeremy Rabkin |David Azerrad |Will Thibeau |Douglas A. Jeffrey

The late James Q. Wilson once observed of a domestic reform proposal that, like Middle East peace, it had everything in its favor except feasibility. It’s hard to avoid this conclusion about the reforms proposed by Philip K. Howard. Howard sees an America mired in frustration and dysfunction. As he says at the outset of his new book, Everyday Freedom:Nothing much works as it should. Simple daily choices seem fraught with peril. In the workplace, we walk on eggshells.

Sep 30, 2024 | claremontreviewofbooks.com | Conrad Black |Douglas A. Jeffrey |Will Thibeau |Michael Kochin

In their heyday, the most famous newspapers in the United States and Great Britain were subjects of intense public curiosity. Histories of their management and biographies of their rather flamboyant owners could turn a tidy profit. It is moderately encouraging that this genre of books, which scrutinizes the comings and goings of senior editorial officials at major newspapers, is coming back in fashion. It suggests some renewed interest in the beleaguered newspaper industry.

Sep 3, 2024 | claremontreviewofbooks.com | Michael Anton |Douglas A. Jeffrey |Ben Weingarten |Christopher Caldwell

It seems that in every decade of his distinguished career in Harvard’s Government Department, Harvey C. Mansfield opens up a new vista on some vast topic—the origins and nature of party government, original versus contemporary liberalism, modernity, executive power, manliness—only to turn his attentions to something else. The exception, the one subject to which he has repeatedly returned, is Niccolò Machiavelli.

Aug 25, 2024 | claremontreviewofbooks.com | Douglas A. Jeffrey |Helen Andrews |William Voegeli |Patrick Collins

With The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, Adam Shatz, U.S. editor of the London Review of Books, has written a generally excellent biography—already named a best book of the year by The New York Times and The New Yorker—though sometimes he is a little naïve or even wrongheaded.