book review

Nonfiction is a baggy-pants term, in whose bulging pockets one finds autobiography, memoir, the essay, literary journalism, and book-length studies of ideas, trends, and much else. The only thing these various forms have in common is that all are written in prose and are based, supposedly, on fact.

In the best-known court case in the Hebrew Bible, two women come to King Solomon, the wise, wealthy, and powerful king with the following quandary: One of their children died in his sleep, while the other remains alive. There are no witnesses, and each mother claims that the living child is hers. Solomon requests a sword to cut the baby in half; but the real mother, “overcome with compassion for her son,” the Bible tells us, relinquishes custody in order to save the baby’s life. This woman, Solomon concludes, is the true mother. 

Marilynne Robinson is afraid we are losing our “loyalty to democracy” in America, though her reasons for fearing this might (or might not) surprise you. Tribalism and austerity—a general lack of generosity—will kill America. Individuals are generous enough, she admits, but what is lacking is a generosity in our public discourse and public programs. This is the gist of her sometimes insightful, but too often frustratingly vague, collection of essays. 

When John Henry Newman died in 1890, English papers around the world singled out different aspects of his life and work for praise or censure, but on one point they were unanimous. As the obituarist of the Colonies and India put it, “We question whether there is a living writer who had a command of the English tongue at once so eloquent and incisive, though often ironical.” The force of Newman’s style may have been universally acknowledged, but the content of the writing was rarely paid the attention it deserves.

Nothing has been left unsaid about Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the Jewish insurance lawyer from Prague who conducted his work life in Czech, his personal life in German, and his nocturnal writer’s life in a highly condensed metaphoric language whose striking images reveal the absurd core in the human struggle for justice or happiness. 

One almost feels like shedding a tear for rich people these days. They are regularly pilloried by President Obama and his acolytes on editorial pages and talk shows as selfish greedheads who need to be taxed, and taxed again, as punishment for their wealth. Malcolm Forbes loved to show how his money let him pursue his endless enthusiasms, such as flying a balloon or buying artifacts for his collections. But if Forbes were alive today, the grim, prim Gradgrinds of the left would relentlessly attack him for daring to spend his wealth on activities he enjoyed.

There is no doubt that the American presidency is an imperfect institution and that it has been inhabited by imperfect people. Given these incontrovertible facts, political scientists have long sought ways to improve the presidency. Some want to make it more powerful, others less. Some want us to pursue a parliamentary-style system, while others have argued for allowing more to be done by executive fiat. Professor David Orentlicher of Indiana University has come up with an original but almost certainly unworkable approach: He wants to split the presidency in half.

Demetrius of Phaleron, the eccentric tyrant of Athens in the last years of the fourth century b.c., was the proud owner of a giant mechanical snail. This wonder of artifice led the religious processions for which Athens was famous, spitting up saliva, spritzing (we may guess) the squealing onlookers with cooling water, and leaving a deliciously repellent slimy trail behind to settle the dust.  

He poses as an investigative journalist and is presented in his main outlets—the Nation, MSNBC, Socialist Worker, Democracy Now!—as a foreign-affairs expert. In fact, Jeremy Scahill—a college dropout who was arrested several times in the 1990s in connection with (among other things) the occupation of a federal building and the vandalizing of a military aircraft—has never been anything but a radical ideologue out to discredit America and debilitate its defenses. 

Early in this book, author Brendan Simms, professor of history at Cambridge, quotes John Locke: “How fond soever I am of peace I think truth ought to accompany it, which cannot be preserved without Liberty. Nor that without the Balance of Europe kept up.” As Simms indicates, for Locke, “truth” was defined as Protestantism and parliamentary government, while “the Balance of Europe” referred to the security of the German territories in its heartland.