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BOOKS

Prince Harry’s 400-page temper tantrum Spare is one of the most annoying books I have ever read. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/01/11/prince-harrys-400-page-temper-tantrum/

This is the most annoying book I have read in a long time. Even the bio on the first page is annoying. The Duke of Sussex, it says, is ‘a husband, father, humanitarian, military veteran, mental-wellness advocate and environmentalist’. I’m surprised it didn’t add ‘He / him’. Environmentalist? Mother Nature might have something to say about that. The man who once flew in a private jet to a Google camp in Sicily to speak about climate change, and who snorted ‘No one is perfect’ when a hack had the temerity to point out that 60 per cent of the flights he takes are on private jets, is now putting ‘environmentalist’ in his actual bio? Now that’s chutzpah. Or gaslighting. One of those.

Actually, Spare is a big, fat, wordy act of gaslighting. It’s a 400-page tantrum about family and money and tiaras (I’m not joking). It’s primal therapy masquerading as memoir, where the aim seems to be less to tell the truth about what’s being going on in the deranged House of Windsor than to absolve Harry and Meghan of any responsibility for it. These two are never to blame for anything, apparently. Drama and malice just magically appear whenever they’re around. Curious. Most of all, Spare is an act of fraternal treachery. I don’t know much about life in a royal family. But I know about brothers. And I know that if any of my brothers did to me what Harry has done to William in this infernal book, it would be game over. The betrayal of confidence contained in this self-pitying tome is extraordinary.

Irritation drips from every page. There’s the Jamie Oliver-style banterous lingo. Harry goes on a ‘lads’ trip’ with a ‘bunch of muppets’. His grandpa, Prince Philip, liked to ‘rock a bit of scruff now and then’, he says, by which he means grow facial hair. He loves a cheeky Nando’s. That’s a surefire way of ‘enhancing my calm’, he says – ‘Nando’s chicken’. He and a mate were ‘proper fucked’ once when they tried to round up some cows. ‘Fuck fuck fuck’, he says to himself in Afghanistan, like one of the middle-class characters in a Richard Curtis film. One of his military superiors had ‘the heart of a fucking ninja’, he says. ‘And at that moment I needed a ninja.’ At Eton he watches Family Guy ‘while stoned’ and forms an ‘inexplicable bond with Stewie’.

The Soviet Union: A Primer Michael Malice’s new book is the perfect gift for anyone who thinks Communism is cool. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-soviet-union-a-primer/

I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by the Soviet Union. For most of my life, it was the other superpower, the villain to our hero, the anti-matter to our matter. We had freedom and prosperity; they had neither. It loomed large in our imaginations but was, as Churchill famously put it, a “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” We held their lives in our hands, and they held ours in theirs. During my teens, I read everything about the place that I could get my hands on.

In 1976, paperback editions were issued of both Russia: The People and the Power by Robert G. Kaiser, who’d been the Washington Post’s correspondent in Moscow, and The Russians by Hedrick Smith, who’d held the same position at the New York Times. I read both books avidly. At around the same time, probably on the 19-cent used-book tables at the legendary Barnes & Noble annex at 5th Avenue and 18th Street, I came across a paperback entitled The Soviet Union: The First Fifty Years, edited by Harrison E. Salisbury. Published in 1967, it contained twenty-odd essays by New York Times staffers on different aspects of contemporary Soviet life and culture.

I still have my copies of these books. I paged through them just now. In all three, what stands out most is the authors’ readiness to normalize life under totalitarianism – to emphasize the good, to minimize the bad, to make Soviet life relatable to Americans by portraying it as something that, just like our own life, has its pluses and minuses. Smith warns in his foreword that readers shouldn’t “misinterpret my criticisms of certain features of the Russian way of life as constituting approval of corresponding aspects of Western society.” Similarly, Kaiser, in his introduction, writes that “when I criticize some aspect of Soviet life, implicitly or explicitly, I hope it is clear that I am not simultaneously trying to endorse the corresponding feature of Western life.” I only just now noticed the striking similarity between those two sentences. Remarkable, no?

Final Battle: David Horowitz Defines the Fight for America We’re one election away from losing our future. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/final-battle-david-horowitz-defines-the-fight-for-america/

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country,” Thomas Paine wrote in 1776.

No American who loves our country can look at these past years without feeling that our souls have been tried. At conservative conferences and events there is an inescapable desire for a big picture sense of what we are up against and whether the fight can be won. And that is what David Horowitz offers in his latest book, “Final Battle: The Next Election Could Be the Last”.

Since “Destructive Generation”, Horowitz has spent over three decades chronicling our national crisis in his books and few deny that we are living in the world that he had spent so long warning conservatives would come to pass if the totalitarian ambitions of the Left went unchecked.

“Final Battle” is a fitting title for a culture warrior whose message to conservatives, over and over again, was that they needed to learn to fight. This is a book that describes the fight and its missed opportunities, of those who fought and those who didn’t, and what the next phase, and perhaps the final phase, of the struggle for the country that he loves so much looks like.

Bibi: A Remarkable Life Israel’s Prime Minister tells his story. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bibi-a-remarkable-life/

One of the good tidings of great joy for the otherwise none too promising year of  2023 is that Benjamin Netanyahu, as of December 29, is prime minister of Israel for the third time. As Britain was blessed to have Margaret Thatcher, and the U.S. blessed to have Reagan and Trump, so Israel has been blessed to have this singular figure at the helm for so much of its short history. To explain why this is the case would take a substantial book. Fortunately, that book – Bibi: My Story, Netanyahu’s autobiography – has just been published. And it’s not only substantial but superlative – a first-rate account of one of the most influential lives of the past century.

Born a year after his country’s founding, Bibi, in the early pages of his book, offer a tantalizing glimpse of Israel in its infancy. There were giants in the earth then, and Bibi grew up surrounded by many of them. Among them was his father’s mentor, Joseph Klausner, who, Bibi tells us, “invented the modern Hebrew words for ‘shirt,’ ‘pencil,’ and many other terms” – a detail that underlines the remarkable extent to which Israel’s founding really was, at once, a matter of resurrecting an ancient civilization while at the same time creating a distinctive modern society from scratch.

Another one of Israel’s founding giants was Bibi’s father, Benzion, a brilliant scholar, historian, and editor of the Encyclopedia Hebraica. In 1933, at age 23, Benzion had written an article warning of a coming “Holocaust” of the Jews – and been dismissed as “alarmist.” In the years before the establishment of Israel, Benzion played a major role in promoting Zionism in America and Europe. Bibi worshiped him. “The secret to the encyclopedia’s great success, my father said, was clarity,” Bibi recalls. “Eighth graders and doctoral students, he said, should be able to read and understand with equal ease complex entries made simple by his rigorous editing. And they did.” Bibi obviously learned his father’s lesson: this book is uncommonly well written, lucid, vivid, and consistently engaging.

Owing, first of all, to his father’s academic career (ending in a faculty position at Cornell) and, later, to his own education (at MIT), Bibi spent much of his early life in the U.S., hence his perfect, unaccented American English. Throughout this book, his affection and admiration for America are palpable. But Bibi is first and last an Israeli, a man who has devoted his life to his homeland’s preservation, peace, and prosperity.

And the same was true of Bibi’s older brother, Yoni, and his younger brother, Iddo, both of whom, like Bibi, served in Israel’s special forces. Iddo went on to be a radiologist and playwright; Yoni briefly attended Yale and Hebrew University in Jerusalem but quit to return to the IDF. In 2011, Elizabeth Gentieu, who had taught Yoni high-school English in the U.S., remembered how eager the teenager was to return to Israel. “But surely there must be some advantages to life here,” Gentieu said. Yoni replied: “Here in America my classmates don’t know what they are living for, but in Israel, we know.”

Michelle Admits She ‘Couldn’t Stand’ Barry By Jeannie DeAngelis

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/12/michelle_admits_she_couldnt_stand_barry.html

While promoting her self-help book The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times, during a “cross-generational” conversation in Atlanta, Michelle Obama shared deep thoughts with a panel moderated by American radio personality, rapper, singer, actress, and toady Angie Martinez.  

The star-studded, “powerful” women of color on the panel also included singer, actress, and television personality Kelly Rowland; Beyoncé’s mama, Tina “Knowles” Lawson; vitiligo spokesperson/model Winnie Harlow; and H.E.R., AKA Gabi Wilson, a singer, songwriter, musician, and actress.

In The Light We Carry, Michelle Obama penned a chapter entitled “Partnering Well.”  Based on decades of Michelle Obama’s unstinting extension of political compromise, racial conciliation, and partisan collegiality, she now must feel qualified to counsel others on how to get along with those they secretly hate.  This time, the always relatable Michelle chose to make her point by shedding “light” on her love/hate partnership with husband Barack.

Much to everyone’s surprise, soft and embraceable Michelle admitted that for more than a decade, she “couldn’t stand” her spouse.  From 1992 until 2002, while Barry was strategizing his passage from a community activist to ruler of the world, Michelle was silently aiming her death stare at someone other than Trump.

One must admit that it is impressive how Michelle manages to paint herself as the victim of whatever circumstance she happens to find herself in.  Furthermore — not that this is a competition — it’s been many years since Barack Obama graced the world stage with his awesomeness.  Yet, unlike Michelle, there are hundreds of millions of Americans who still “can’t stand” him.

As an outspoken activist, Michelle has built her reputation on perpetual scorekeeping.

Biden Screamed and Dropped F-Bombs As Border Crisis Ravaged Sarah Arnold  

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/12/22/biden-screamed-and-dropped-f-bomb-as-border-crisis-ravaged-n2617493

The southern border is in shambles. It has been overrun by illegal migrants and drug cartels who are bringing dangerous substances and people into the U.S., yet America’s president believes that there are “more important” things to worry about. 

However, it turns out that President Joe Biden was and is fully aware of the havoc he has caused on the border. 

According to a new book titled, “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House,” author Chris Whipple said that Biden screamed and cursed as the crisis at the border escalated. 

Whipple, who spent the first two years shadowing the Biden Administration, recalled the moment the president learned that thousands of illegal migrants were storming the southern border. 

“Meanwhile, illegal immigrants kept arriving. And Biden was furious,” Whipple wrote, adding “aides had rarely seen him so angry. From all over the West Wing, you could hear the president cursing, dropping f-bombs.” 

Despite Biden never visiting the border or addressing the problem at all, he reportedly had a “short fuse” when it came to the matter. 

“Next to vaccine disinformation, this was the thing that made Biden’s blood boil,” the book reads. 

A senior official reportedly told Whipple that Biden was frustrated with the “lack of solutions” his team brought to him as the country began to become more aware of the problem. 

A Blueprint For a Genocide of Existence Confronting the nihilistic call to rid the world of family. by Jason D. Hill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-blueprint-for-a-genocide-of-existence/

A new breed of zealots has forged fourth-wave feminism, and it’s far more rabidly anti-family, anti-male, and anti-civilization than previous iterations of the ideological movement. You’d think because of its petty maliciousness and deranged radicalism, its appeal would be narrowly limited to the faculty lounges of liberal arts colleges. Yet since the inception of the #MeToo movement, the crazed foot soldiers of fourth-wave feminism managed not only to take their worldview mainstream, but also to put a headlock on the commanding heights of American culture.

This is as impressive as it is terrifying. These new nihilists are seething with toxic femininity, and the further spread of their noxious sentiment could likely spell the death of our country as we know it. Increasingly prevalent is their practice of exploiting female agency and identity to wage a blanket attack on society and men, to abolish the labor market, and to advocate for the end of the family. They are achieving these goals while simultaneously promulgating the idea that the family is by nature nefarious, and that female advancement can only come through the wholesale annihilation of heteronormative constructs of capitalism, work, and the family. The destructive consequences for relationships at every level of society—from the basic couple to the community to the nation—will be vast and irreparable.

In Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, feminist philosopher Sophie Lewis writes: “[But] I can’t wait to see what comes after the family. I also know I probably won’t live to see whatever it is. Still, I hope it happens, and I hope it is a glorious and abundant nothing.”

Lewis is convinced that the concept of family is a cancerous blight on existence and that nothing should replace it. Starting with the premise that capitalism is bad because it is coterminous with patriarchy, white supremacy, and a world that mandates work and privatizes care, her communist utopian vision would see a world in which mothering is queered, and traditional motherhood is abolished.

The Multifront War: Defending America From Political Islam, China, Russia, Pandemics, and Racial Strife Updated –by Kenneth Abramowitz

America is fighting a major international war, says the author. Yet, the country does not really know it. Moreover, the war is being waged on a multitude of distinct fronts—both internal and external. The United States is wholly unprepared to fight a unified battle. Threat analyst Kenneth Abramowitz carefully takes us through the first step—recognition. He then ushers readers into the bold realm of mounting a multifaceted defense that will save America as a Democracy with the capacity to continually improve and thrive.

Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father By Steven Fried****

The monumental life of Benjamin Rush, medical pioneer and one of our most provocative and unsung Founding Fathers
 
By the time he was thirty, Dr. Benjamin Rush had signed the Declaration of Independence, edited Common Sense, toured Europe as Benjamin Franklin’s protégé, and become John Adams’s confidant, and was soon to be appointed Washington’s surgeon general. And as with the greatest Revolutionary minds, Rush was only just beginning his role in 1776 in the American experiment. As the new republic coalesced, he became a visionary writer and reformer; a medical pioneer whose insights and reforms revolutionized the treatment of mental illness; an opponent of slavery and prejudice by race, religion, or gender; an adviser to, and often the physician of, America’s first leaders; and “the American Hippocrates.” Rush reveals his singular life and towering legacy, installing him in the pantheon of our wisest and boldest Founding Fathers.
 
Praise for Rush
 
“Entertaining . . . Benjamin Rush has been undeservedly forgotten. In medicine . . . [and] as a political thinker, he was brilliant.”—The New Yorker
 
“Superb . . . reminds us eloquently, abundantly, what a brilliant, original man Benjamin Rush was, and how his contributions to . . . the United States continue to bless us all.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“Perceptive . . . [a] readable reassessment of Rush’s remarkable career.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“An amazing life and a fascinating book.”—CBS This Morning

“Fried makes the case, in this comprehensive and fascinating biography, that renaissance man Benjamin Rush merits more attention. . . . Fried portrays Rush as a complex, flawed person and not just a list of accomplishments; . . . a testament to the authorial thoroughness and insight that will keep readers engaged until the last page.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[An] extraordinary and underappreciated man is reinstated to his rightful place in the canon of civilizational advancement in Rush. . . . Had I read Fried’s Rush before the year’s end, it would have crowned my favorite books of 2018 . . . [a] superb biography.”—Brain Pickings

The Most Dangerous President in American History A new book highlights the ways Biden is putting us at risk. by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-most-dangerous-president-in-american-history/

Prior to Joe Biden’s ascension to the White House in early 2021, it would have been difficult for many American patriots to believe that a worse president than Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama could sit in the Oval Office. Then Biden wasted no time proving those patriots wrong. From Day One he has been such an unmitigated disaster for the country that only 19% of Americans said in a poll last Sunday that they want Biden to run again in 2024. A July poll revealed that only 13% of Americans believe the country is on the right track. Apparently few believe that Biden is building back better, much less making America great again.

His incompetence (or conversely, his competence in carrying out a destructive agenda) has done more than just bring the country to the brink of a failed state after only half a term, though; it also has endangered Americans in many ways, and its legacy will continue to do so for generations. Indeed, bestselling author Nick Adams, in his new book from Post Hill Press, labels Joe Biden The Most Dangerous President in History.