A Brit Looks At Nixonland

Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland hit British bookstores earlier this month, and at the London Telegraph Dominic Sandbrook, of Oxford’s history faculty and the author of well-received books on Eugene McCarthy and England in the Swinging Sixties, reviews it. His...

Disaster Diplomacy: Sino-U.S. Humanitarian Exercises

Navy Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of U.S. Pacific Command said yesterday that he and his Chinese counterpart had agreed to conduct two bilateral humanitarian assistance and disaster response exercises. According to the Department of Defense: Keating said he and...

Yankee Stadium’s Best Night

The recent 2008 Major League Baseball All Star Game-and-a-half showcased not only the game’s current best and greats from yesteryear; it also starred a structure.  The venue was the message.  As Yankee Stadium brings athletes and fans through its gates as part of a...

Snow And Tull

Few people were better liked in Washington, and for good reason, than former White House press spokesperson Tony Snow, who died last week at age 53, so it’s no surprise that this morning President Bush, Karl Rove, and other figures from the political, social,...

The High-Priced Perlstein Paperback

At Paper Cuts, the blog of the New York Times Book Review, Mick Sussman describes what happened when he went to Amazon.com recently seeking a copy of Rick Perlstein’s study of the Goldwater campaign of 1964, Before The Storm. Sussman, who wanted to read that...

What If Nixon Had Not Gone To China?

Last week, I was the guest on a Chinese language TV show produced by Voice of America and broadcast live in China. Chinese callers are given a toll free number in China they can call to pose questions. The topic of discussion was “non-traditional security threats to...

The Dollar Drops, And Boeing Soars

What do the Chinese do when the dollar drops and the RMB rises? shopping! Air China announced today that it will purchase 45 planes from Boeing with a book value of $6.3 billion. The RMB has risen 6.65 percent against the dollar so far this year, and about 20 percent...

Shakeups At LA Times and Chicago Tribune

Ever since real-estate mogul Sam Zell gained control of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Baltimore Sun, these newspapers have seen one staff cutback and executive shakeup after another. Yesterday was no exception, as David Hiller, publisher of the Times,...

What’s in a Name?

With the Olympics 24 days away, Chinese officials proposed changing the name that the island of Taiwan has used for previous Olympics.  The English, “Chinese Taipei” would remain unchanged, but the Chinese would change from 中華台北(zhonghua taibei) to 中國台北 (zhongguo...

Words From The Wise

I cannot tell a lie: Richard Brookhiser’s column in today’s New York Post —“George’s Advice For Barack & John”— is well worth your time.