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Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times’s Man in Moscow  by S. J. Taylor, Oxford University Press, 1990.  Estonia After the end of World War I, the United States supported independence for the Baltic states, and sent Naval Commander John A. Gade to Estonia. The New York Times sent Duranty to Estonia to cover the Commander Gade. Walter Duranty interviewed a Russian sailor that the Bolsheviks had sent to Latvia with money and jewels to be given to American Commun

The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy  by Stephanie Gutmann, Encounter Books, 2005.  Optics While Israel has won military wars against its Arab neighbors, it has lost in the court of international public opinion.  Lazy Western Journalists In general, Western journalists stationed in Israel are perhaps a bit on the lazy side. Western journalists in Jerusalem hang out with each other at the American Colony Hotel, and generally know few Israe

The Man Who Invented Fidel: Castro, Cuba, and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times  by Anthony DePalma, PublicAffairs, 2007.  Was Fidel Castro Killed in Oriente Province? On December 2, 1956, rebel forces, lead by Fidel Castro, landed on Las Coloradas Beach in Oriente Province. Planes of the Cuban air force bombed and strafed Castro’s forces on the beach. A United Press reporter talked with a Cuban pilot, who told him that Fidel Castro had been killed. Cuban Dictator Ful

Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle  by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Twelve, 2009.  Technology In recent years, the state of Israel has produced a large number of technology companies, way out of proportion the small size of its population.  The authors have identified a number of traits that may be responsible for Israel’s phenomenal success: (a) Informality, (b) Chutzpah, (ccc) It is okay to fail, (d) Everyone knows everyone Military Israel depends on a

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East  by Michael Oren, Oxford University Press, 2002.  The Straits of Tiran The Straits of Tiran are located at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, between Sharm al-Sheik in Sinai and Saudi Arabia. Israel has a port, Eilat, at the north end of the Gulf of Aqaba. Gamal Abdel Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships in late May 1967. He ordered the Egyptian navy to sink Israeli ships passing through th

Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me  by Geert Wilders, Regnery Publishing, 2012.  Freedom of Speech Wilders discusses several Europeans whose freedom of speech has been attacked for telling the truth about Islam. Jean-Claude Barreau was fired from his position in the French government for writing a book critical of Islam in 1991. On May 6, 2002, Pim Fortuyn, who advocated discrimination in favor of Christianity and against Islam, and who favored banning Isla

A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam  by Wafa Sultan, St. Martin's Griffin, 2009.  Alawites The Baath Party of Syria was formed by educated Christians, (Shia) Alawites and other non-Sunni minorities, to protect themselves from Sunni persecution. The Sunni Muslim Brotherhood has been strong in Hama and Aleppo, and has fought against the Alawite regime in Damascus.  Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan was

The Tyranny of Silence  by Flemming Rose, Cato Institute, 2016.  A Danish journalist’s memoir of standing up to Islam. In 1990 the author became the Moscow correspondent for the Berligske Tidenda. The author was the Moscow correspondent for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, starting in 1999 to 2004. Later, he became the Culture Editor of the Jyllands0-Posten (2004). Rose wanted to find out whether Danish cartoonists would censor themselves to avoid offending Muslim sensib

The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist  by Robert R. Reilly, ISI Books, 2010.  Reason versus Dogmatism This book is about how Islam turned away from reason and embraced religious dogmatism. The author explains at the outset that this book is a history of Sunni, and not Shia,  Islamic theology. He mentions Shia theology only briefly. Much of the history of Islamic theology is about reason versus revelation. Saint Thomas Aquinas Dur

Because They Hate  by Brigitte Gabriel, St. Martin's Press, 2006.  A Christian in Lebanon Brigitte Gabriel tells her story of growing up as a Christian Arab in Lebanon during their civil war. Lebanon received waves of Palestinian refugees after the founding of Israel and again after the Six-Day War. When King Hussein of Jordan expelled the Palestinians from Jordan in 1970, Lebanon was the only Arab country that was willing to accept them. The Palestinians repaid this generos

The Flight of the Intellectuals: The Controversy Over Islamism and the Press  by Paul Berman, Melville House, 2010.  Cowardice This book is about how many Western public intellectuals have been afraid to oppose political Islam. It focuses on the Swiss-Muslim intellectual, Tariq Ramadan, and the Western intellectuals who have embraced him as a proponent of moderate Islam. European intellectuals have embraced moderate Islamist Tariq Ramadan, rather than Enlightenment champion A

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland  by Patrick Radden Keefe, Vintage Books Trade Paperback, 2021.  Roman Catholics in Ulster The reason Catholics in Ulster rebelled against the UK was that the Protestant majority treated them like second-class citizens. From Terrorist to Politician The basic issue is whether, after a peace agreement, men who were previously terrorists, should be allowed to become politicians.

The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran  by Andrew Scott Cooper. Picador (2018)

The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran  by Masih Alinejad, Little, Brown and Company, 2018.

Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II  by Madhusree Mukerjee, Basic Books, 2010.  Indian Textiles In fact, India was the world’s number one producer of textiles before the British Industrial Revolution. To protect Britain’s nascent textile industry, the British slapped high tariffs on textile imports from India. Thereafter, India could export only the raw material, the cotton, to Great Britain, and not its manufactured goods,

Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition  by Nisid Hajar, Houghten Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.  Independence from Great Britain This is a book about what happened in August, 1947, when Britain gave its colony India its independence. Simultaneously when it freed India, it also partitioned India into Muslim and Hindu countries. Clement Atlee was British Prime Minister during the partition of India.  Timeline Before Partition 1937: The Congress Party rejected partne

India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age  by Gurcharan Das, Anchor Books, 2002.  Nehru Jawarlahal Nehru spent some time in England, where he was trained by the Fabian socialists. Nehru brought socialism back to India. The Indian socialists looked to the Soviet Union as their role model. On the plus side, Nehru favored democracy and secularism. He also helped pass the Hindu Code act, which gave women an equal share of fa

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity  by Douglas Murray. Bloomsbury Continuum; (2020)

The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time   by Yascha Mounk, Penguin Press, 2023.

Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America  by John McWhorter, Portfolio/Penguin, 2021.  The people who believe in Woke he calls “The Elect”. Woke Racism is a religion, because: Superstition Clergy Original Sin Evangelical Apocalyptic Bans the heretic Supplants older religions Canceled people: Nurse Leslie Neal-Boylan David Shor Daniel Patrick Moloney (Roman Catholic) Todd EEklot (UU) Gary Garrels, curator 3 planks author advocates: End the war on drugs Use ph