Archive
The complete Open Letters Monthly Archive.
For two terms, first as National Security Advisor and then as Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was the most - often the only - likeable face of the George W. Bush administration. But does this quintessential team player break ranks in her new memoir?
Read MoreThough most people don't understand musical notation or the theory underlying it, nearly all classical music writing relies on it. Today, the initiate has a better option: YouTube.
Read MoreJohn Nance Garner famously referred to the vice presidency as being not worth a bucket of warm, er, spit - and yet, during the two terms of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney used that office to wield unprecedented power. The former vice president writes an unapologetic memoir.
Read MoreThe ethics of Wikileaks (and the antics of its mastermind, Julian Assange) continue to be the focus of controversy - and new books. Greg Waldmann takes a comprehensive look at the entire phenomenon.
Read MoreIf you're hoping for a heartfelt mea culpa from an architect of two disastrous wars, this isn't it. Donald Rumsfeld's memoir is shallow at best, cynically self-serving at worst.
Read MoreThe Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems depressingly intractable, an impasse without end. A new book offers a hypothetical solution, but is it foolish idealism, unworkable pragmatism - or a desperately innovative kind of hope?
Read MoreNixon's crimes are known to us all. A new book reveals that his biggest tormentor in the media committed a few of them himself.
Read MoreNo American president in a generation has so polarized the country as George W. Bush, and his new book will almost certainly polarize its readers. Is it defiant agitprop or heartfelt memoir?
Read MoreThe so-called Tea Party would like to dump President Obama in Boston Harbor - but even ordinary politicians often misunderstand him. The reasons are simpler than you think.
Read MoreSince the days of T.E. Lawrence, reporters have been providing the West with carefully-wrought (or overwrought) tales of the Middle East. A new book comments on the excesses--and maybe commits a few too.
Read MoreUnlike most prior White House wonks, Matt Latimer aw-shucks his way through history and into deep, deep trouble; Greg Waldmann reviews Speech Less
Read MoreIn our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
Read MoreEric van Lustbader throws every cliche in the kitchen into Robert Ludlum’s endless Bourne saga, attempting to keep the pot boiling. Greg Waldmann tastes the stew.
Read MoreEdward Lucas, in The New Cold War, puts a modern face on the hoary geopolitical struggle between the Russian bear and the American eagle. Greg Waldmann sorts the players and evaluates the stakes.
Read MoreEvan Thomas, under the aegis of Newsweek, with substantial researcher assistance, after the editing of … well, “A Long Time Coming”, the first post-election account of President Obama’s campaign, got written somehow. Greg Waldmann goes into it with high hopes – and then conducts the autopsy.
Read MoreIt’s been years—too long!—since Martha Argerich has preformed solo. Greg Waldmann eagerly pours thorugh her new DVD and the history of her brilliant career for clues to her reclusiveness and for glimmers of hope.
Read MoreJane Mayers’ The Dark Side describes the United States’ rapid descent into the murky ways of torture and secret autocracy. Whether its the expediting of illegal proceedings or the out-sourcing of brutality, Greg Waldmann tries not to flinch from what he finds in Meyers’ account.
Read MoreA mere month remains until the most fiercely fought and most historically pivotal American presidential election of the last half-century. In July, Greg Waldmann served up an in-depth look at Republican John McCain. Here, just in time for the election, he does likewise for Democrat Barack Obama.
Read MoreThe Last Patriot, by Brad Thor
Read MoreIn his latest book (a slim one this time), Robert Kagan again probes the socio-political state of the West. History is back, he tells us—about a week after he told us it was gone. Greg Waldmann helps us to to keep track of the epochs without a scorecard in his review of The Return of History and the End of Dreams.
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