Condom Nation: The U.S. Government’s Sex Education Campaign from World War I to the Internet Alexandra M. Lord The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009; 224 pages, $40.00 I’m someone who managed to reach adulthood without so much as thirty seconds’ worth of sex education. My parents were far too lace-curtain to broach the subject voluntarily; […]
Read More
You’re Teaching My Child What? A Physician Exposes the Lies of Sex Education and How They Harm Your Child Miriam Grossman, M.D. Regnery, 2009; 246 pages, $24.95 It used to be that with spring’s herald, a young man’s fancy turned to love. Now, he can celebrate April as STD Awareness Month. Clicking on the Centers […]
Read More
Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity Gary Cross Columbia University Press, 2008; 316 pages, $29.50 About a year ago when all the world was learning the lurid details of Tiger Woods’s sexual history, a history marked by depravity that was surpassed only by its immaturity, a lesser-known sports figure was also having romantic […]
Read More
Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element John D. Mueller ISI Books, 2010; 452 pages, $27.95 John Mueller’sRedeeming Economics is an impressive achievement, really three books in one. Mueller rewrites the history of economics in the first book. In the second book, Mueller expands the concerns of economics, in the light of his historical reinterpretation. The […]
Read More
We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future Matthew Spalding ISI Books, 2009; 267 pages, $26.95 This wonderfully lucid, judiciously penetrating, and most edifying book grew out of lectures that Matthew Spalding, a contributor to this journal, has delivered to politically minded young conservatives over the years. It is the best available […]
Read More
Freedom’s Orphans Contemporary Liberalism and the Fate of American Children David L. Tubbs Princeton University Press, 2007; 233 pages, $66.00 cloth, $30.95 paper. In Freedom’s Orphans, David L. Tubbs asks contemporary American liberals—can one take freedom too far? As he sees it, the question is simply “whether the exercise of certain freedoms by adults—including some […]
Read More
When Gay People Get Married What Happens When Societies Legalize Same-Sex Marriage M. V. Lee Badgett NYU Press, 2009; 285 pages, $35.00 In 2001, the Netherlands became the first nation in the world to legally and fully redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. The experience of the Dutch with same-sex marriage would, therefore, seem to […]
Read More
Womenomics Write Your Own Rules for Success Claire Shipman and Katty Kay HarperBusiness, 2009; 256 pages, $27.99 Some time after Rosie the riveter helped in the World War Two effort, the percentage of women working outside the home doubled and women made their way into the front offices. According to an April 1996 essay in […]
Read More
The New American Economy The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward Bruce Bartlett Palgrave McMillan, 2009; 266 pages; $28.00 It is a shame that John Maynard Keynes isn’t alive to defend himself against Bruce Bartlett’s praise. The great English economist, who did not suffer sycophants lightly, would have abominated posthumous ones. Bartlett has […]
Read More
Living Constitution, Dying Faith:Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence Bradley C. S. Watson ISI Books, 2009; 250 pages, $25.00 Toward the end of Living Constitution,Bradley C. S. Watson recalls the remark by the second Earl of Pembroke as to how Parliament can do anything but make a man into a woman. Pembroke’s point was that […]
Read More