Free Republic

Love him or hate him, Antonin Scalia has had a greater influence on the way Americans debate the law today than any other modern Supreme Court justice. Conservatives hail Scalia as the founding prophet of their true faith — the Jurisprudence of Original Understanding — and the leader of the opposition to moral relativism and judicial imperialism in the age of Obama. [...] It’s hard to write a fair-minded biography of such a polarizing figure, but that’s what Joan Biskupic has done with “American Original.” ... On the court, Scalia has shown a disdain for elites that keeps him not...

A new unauthorized biography of "America's pastor" Rick Warren uncovers a marriage with an unconventional beginning and a time of depression that later gave Warren the strength to become who he is today. Jeffery L. Sheler, religion correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, delves into the world of Warren in his latest book, Prophet of Purpose: The Life of Rick Warren. The book portrays the affable yet confident megachurch pastor who calls presidents and billionaires his friends in a much more vulnerable light. In a live Web discussion with Christianity Today editor-in-chief David Neff on Wednesday, Sheler talked about...

"I think Obama's in a league with TR," observes historian and presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley. "He created his political reputation through the written word." To be sure, no one has ever accused Sarah Palin, a defeated vice presidential candidate, of creating her reputation thusly. One has to wonder, then, why her book, Going Rogue, would merit a fact-check by no fewer than eleven Associated Press reporters when neither the AP nor any other mainstream outlet has spent a moment vetting the books of the "author in chief," as President Barack Obama was anointed in a November GQ article, "Barack Obama's...

Rehnquist’s Portrait Allie Winegar Duzett, November 12, 2009 William Rehnquist was by all accounts a fascinating man. His work in the judiciary was unparalleled: he served on the Supreme Court as a justice for over three decades, and led the court as Chief Justice for nineteen years. He was a justice voting on the controversial Roe v. Wade case (Rehnquist wrote the dissent), the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, and for the dispute over 2000 presidential election. As a justice for the Supreme Court, Rehnquist lived his life under public scrutiny—but only a very few got to know the man...

Launching An American Knight in Washington Written by John Horvat    Thursday, October 29, 2009 On October 27, the TFP Washington Bureau was filled with friends and supporters to hear a presentation on the book, An American Knight The Life of Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC just authored by TFP member Norman Fulkerson. The author presented the book to a full and lively auditorium of some 50 people and later personally signed copies. As a special guest, Duke Paul of Oldenburg from the German TFP, gave the opening remarks commenting on the meaning of chivalry today. Also attending was...

Norman Fulkerson, who has been voicing his conservative opinions on the Messenger-Inquirer editorial page for 11 years, has written a book about another conservative, Col. John W. Ripley USMC.... There was much to admire about Ripley, Fulkerson said, during a recent phone interview. Ripley's military career has been documented in other writings, Fulkerson said, but what he was most interested in was telling the other side of the war hero who in 1972 during the Easter Offensive in Dong Ha, Vietnam, blew up a bridge that "virtually halted the largest North Vietnamese offensive of the entire war." "An American Knight,...

As retailers count their robust preorders for Sarah Palin’s upcoming memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” a small publisher out West says his decision to issue “Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down” by Kaylene Johnson, was one of his best. The book, an unauthorized look at Palin’s life that begins with her early years in Alaska and ends with her winning the governorship, was published originally in May 2008, by Epicenter Press, based in Kenmore, Wash. Kent Sturgis, president, says that the biography sold 13,000 hardcovers and 80,000 paperback copies. Demand was so great that...

THERE are many graceful touches in Mao's Last Dancer, Bruce Beresford's stirring, uplifting adaptation of the best-selling memoir by Li Cunxin, the Chinese ballet star who defected to the West in 1981 while on a fellowship with the Houston Ballet. Snip There's little grace, though, in Beresford's highly efficient if workman-like direction. With so much ground to cover and so many characters to keep track of, Beresford diligently churns through Cunxin's story in a frill-free, matter-of-fact manner. This certainly gives the film great drive, if little rhythm or any real sense of style.

In a soon-to-be-released book based on taped interviews, Bill Clinton discusses his presidency, while dishing on Al Gore, Maureen Dowd, and GOPersOn Monday, USA Today ran a front-page article on the soon-to-be-released book chronicling a series of secret interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch held with President Bill Clinton throughout the Clinton presidency. The piece focused on a bizarre episode in which Russian President Boris Yeltsin during a visit to Washington in 1995 ended up in his underwear and drunk on Pennsylvania Avenue, trying to hail a cab. As for the Lewinsky affair, Clinton told Branch, he "just cracked" under...

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner on Wednesday enthused over a new biography of Friedrich Engels, cooing that Marxism is “back in vogue” and adding that the founding communist comes across as a “jovial man of outsize appetites” in Tristram Hunt’s new biography “Marx’s General.” Garner opened the review by insisting that decrying capitalism is now hip again: “Thanks to globalism’s discontents and the financial crisis that has spread across the planet, Karl Marx and his analysis of capitalism’s dark, wormy side are back in vogue.”

“Kings,” Louis XIV once observed, “should enjoy giving pleasure” and when it came to the fairer sex, he obeyed this precept zealously and often. “They’re all good enough for him, provided they’re women,” his sister-in-law remarked, “peasants, gardeners’ daughters, chambermaids, ladies of quality”; women of every stripe benefited from the Sun King’s sexual largesse. Neither the bonds of matrimony (to the sad, neglected Marie-Thérèse of Spain) nor the intrigues of his “official” mistresses (one of whom, Athénaïs de Montespan, wasn’t above spreading the rumor that a particular rival had scabs all over her body) could deter him from sharing the...

Joseph Kennedy and the Jews By Edward Renehan, Jr. (Mr. Renehan's most recent book is The Kennedys at War, 1937-1945, published in April 2002 by Doubleday.) Arriving at London in early 1938, newly-appointed U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy took up quickly with another transplanted American. Viscountess Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor assured Kennedy early in their friendship that he should not be put off by her pronounced and proud anti-Catholicism. "I'm glad you are smart enough not to take my [views] personally," she wrote. Astor pointed out that she had a number of Roman Catholic friends - G.K. Chesterton among them...

A politically neutral friend has asked for recommendations for the best biography of Ronald Reagan. I'm considering "The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister" by John O'Sullivan, but that's probably too narrowly focused. Suggestions would be most appreciated.

One Day at a Time star Mackenzie Phillips was molested by her father John Phillips, the founding lead singer of The Mamas & the Papas! That's the explosive secret the 49-year-old former child actress will reveal in a scathing memoir due to hit bookstores next March, says a publishing insider. While the publisher, Simon Spotlight, has not publicly confirmed Mackenzie's molestation admission, it released a statement saying the troubled actress would reveal a "shocking, lifelong secret." Her addictions led to the downward spiral of her career, arrests and many stints in rehab, as well as two near-fatal overdoses. "In addition...

Guts and grace BOOKS: WORLD’s Lynn Vincent teams up with Sarah Palin on a book that promises to set the record straight about the Alaska governor’s personal and political life | Mickey McLean After last week’s announcement that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would pen a memoir to set the record straight about her personal and political life, HarperCollins revealed Thursday that WORLD Magazine Features Editor Lynn Vincent has been signed on as Palin’s collaborator. The book, not yet titled, will be co-published by HarperCollins imprint Harper and HarperCollins-owned Zondervan and is scheduled for release in the spring of 2010. During...

The Unforgettable Great Communicator by: Malcolm A. Kline, May 12, 2009 The conservative pundits seeking to accumulate intellectual bona fides by aping the intelligentsia’s call to “forget Ronald Reagan” only succeed in proving themselves to be as vacuous as the allegedly educated elite. For example, one cultured pearl of current wisdom is that conservatives have to move beyond “variations of no.” Well, for openers, you have to move towards it before moving beyond it. A federal budget that rose by about $1 trillion when Republicans controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress does not indicate that the GOP...

In 'Sarah Palin: Poised to Become America's First Female President', Recaldo Ochoa explores the life and times of a politician he believes was wronged by the media. He reintroduces Americans to an exceptional American woman, Governor Sarah Palin, who has the character, the qualification, the attributes--intelligence, judgment, leadership ability, and experience--and the unprecedented historical opportunity to become the first female president of the greatest nation on earth.

Cast Two Giant Shadows Heather Latham, February 18, 2009 “Define or be defined; he who wins that debate wins the argument,” said L. Brent Bozell III, founder and president of Media Research Center and nephew of William F. Buckley, Jr., at a Heritage Foundation event. He holds that Ronald Reagan understood this, and nobody could touch him because of it. Nicknames like “the Teflon president” were given to him because no bad press would stick to him. He says, “He understood that there is perception and there is reality, and the perception of reality is all that matters, not the...

Ol’ Blue Eyes Deconstructed by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 29, 2009 Although on the surface, studies of the singer Frank Sinatra seem to be emblematic of the frivolity of university offerings these days, there may actually be some value to this endeavor. After all, most students are not accustomed to listening to vocalists who can keep a beat, hit musical notes with their voices rather than their fists and maintain a melody without an echo chamber. Unfortunately, as with most pedagogical enterprises, the opportunities for inaccuracy abound, and scholars have been seizing on them. “The post-World War II, early cold-war...

Jonathan Bate's eloquent evocation of the man from WarwickshireAt last we have a new kind of biography of Shakespeare. Starting from Ben Jonson’s description of Shakespeare as “Soul of the Age”, and shunning “the deadening march of chronological sequence that is biography’s besetting vice”, Jonathan Bate selects only the material that, he believes, will help to reveal Shakespeare’s cultural DNA. Structuring this loosely around the theme of the Seven Ages of Man from Jaques’s speech in As You Like It, Bate sweeps majestically backwards and forwards in time, moving between history and criticism, appropriating whatever best brings together Shakespeare’s life,...