Tom Rider's Reviews

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By Philip Bobbitt. Atlantic Monthly. ISBN 978-0892120748. In this new interpretation of Machiavelli’s The Prince, Bobbitt debunks the myth of the ruthless, immoral Machiavellian prince, explaining that Machiavelli’s prince is both moral and constitutional.

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By Lucien Jaume & Arthur Goldhammer. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691152042. Democracy in America is best understood as a French book, written primarily for the French, and overwhelmingly concerned with France. American democracy was a pretext for studying nineteenth-century French society and its woes.

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By Jonathan Sperber. W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0871404671. Examines Marx’s public actions and theoretical publications against the backdrop of a European continent roiling with political and social unrest.

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By Joshua Kurlantzick. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300175387. The assumption has always been that as nations develop economically, they will also acquire democratic institutions, supported by the middle class which that growing economy fosters. Not so fast.

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By Theda Skocpol & Vanessa Williamson. Oxford University Press, paper. ISBN 9780199975549. Generally approving of Social Security, Medicare, and benefits for military veterans, Tea Partiers’ opposition to “big government” springs from their reluctance to help the “undeserving” – immigrants, low wage earners, and the young.

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By Marcia Coyle, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9781451627510. The Roberts’ Court – seven years of a predominately 5-4 conservative/liberal split – and five landmark decisions on race, gun control, immigration, campaign finance, and health care.

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By Moisés Naím. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465031566. Power is changing, becoming harder to use and easier to lose. As a result leaders have less power than their predecessors, and the potential for upheaval is heightened.

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By Randall Woods. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465021949. A biography of one of the more fascinating and controversial figures of the postwar period: a WWII commando, Cold War spy, CIA Saigon station chief, and eventual CIA director under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

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By Claire Conner. Beacon Press. 9780807077504. A narrative history of the John Birch Society by a daughter of one of the organization’s founding fathers, giving readers an inside look a 1960s radical right-wing movement.

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