- One of the things that I read religiously every week, in dead tree format, is the New York Times Book Review. It makes me feel like I know a little something about most of the important books that are being published commercially even if I am unlikely to read them. Often the reviews themselves are illuminating -- learned and concise discussions of all manner of subjects, some of which my knowledge is fairly minimal, leaving the sense of having been both educated and entertained in the process. It seems to me, however, that with increasing frequency I am being subjected to book reviews by people -- generally big names of some kind -- who bring so much of their own intellectual bias to the review that the book itself is obscured and distorted. In the last few weeks, I can think of at least three books where the reviewers were either completely unfair to the authors, laden as they were with their own ideological opposition to the works at issue (and possibly pecuniary issues with one reviewer), or where a review was hijacked for purposes of conducting the reviewer's own ideological war, in the process detracting from the much broader scope of the book being reviewed. I guess it is a coup for the editors to land a big name reviewer to write -- it might well generate more interest at a time where I believe the Times has become the last newspaper in America to have a stand alone book review.
The reviews that have drawn my ire in the last few weeks have been by British historian Niall Ferguson (professor of being wrong about pretty much everything at Harvard) on Richard Posner's latest book, The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy, which Ferguson uses to trumpet his own anti-Keynesian world view at the expense of really giving Posner's work the time of day. Ferguson is a noted apologist for British imperialism, was a proponent of America taking up the white man's burden in the Twenty-first Century, and, oh yes, a consultant to a hedge fund, GLG Partners, in which Lehman brothers once held a stake. Ferguson has in the past advocated the abolition of the federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with these programs replaced respectively with a federal sales tax, private savings accounts, and vouchers. In short, he is a full on wingnut with a nice accent, a lovely intellectual pedigree, and an endowed Harvard chair -- in the words of one historian "the court historian for the imperial American hard right." Oh, and speaking of endowed chairs and to prove he's truly a man for all seasons, when he's not apologizing for colonialism or advising hedge funds, he is slipping on the neo-condom and bonking Ayaan Hirst Ali. (Although not his thing, Ferguson has the requisite street cred to be a social conservative having recently left his wife of 16 years for the afore-mentioned Ali.)
In other words, Ferguson has at least some kind of pecuniary interest in being wary of the financial regulation that he trashes in the Book Review, he has a long history of being an advocate for laissez faire governance, and a pronounced hostility to Keynesian economics and social spending generally. Is this really the right man to review this book?
On a less obvious note, but one that in my opinion did an equal disservice to the book being reviewed was Harold Bloom's recent take on Trials of the Diaspora, a history of English anti-semitism by Anthony Julius. The book in question is an 800 plus page history of anti-Jewish sentiment in Britain from the middle ages to the present. Once again, a big named professor -- this time a professor of literature -- dedicates the bulk of his review to denouncing contemporary British academics who are hostile to Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. Bloom paints such critics with a broad brush, characterizing them as anti-semites who want to see Israel cease to exist. There is not a whole lot of nuance in the review and there is an air of anger about it -- it's really pretty much a tirade against an academic tendency that clearly infuriates Bloom.
Now it may be that Bloom does the work justice -- this review by Antony Lerman in the Guardian, suggests that perhaps Julius and Bloom share a similar tone with respect to this subject.
In any event, I found the review to be so pugnacious on this one subject as to cast a lot more heat than light and ultimately to be completely distracting with respect to the book being reviewed. Numerous other readers evidently felt as I did judging by the large number of very cogent reactions against Bloom's polemic. Again, I am not sure that what Bloom did can properly be called a book review and it strikes me as not consistent with the spirit of what I would expect in a review, which would be a detailed discussion of the book at issue, preferably by someone with serious knowledge of the subject in question, and someone who can react fairly to the thesis posed by the author.
Finally, there was this review of Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land by Josef Joffe, a Hoover Institute Fellow, who can fairly be described as an ideological enemy of the social democracy that Judt advocates in his short book. Now, I don't object to a review being done by someone who is politically on the opposite end of the spectrum from an author. If done fairly, this can be an enlightening exercise.
But Joffe tarnishes his attempt with extreme intellectual dishonesty and sixth grade level caricature -- in his second sentence he claims Judt is preaching to the choir of "the Europhile liberal left, who would rather sell their Prius than forgo their New York Review of Books." Not a promising start. Joffe tries to make the case that government spending at all levels in the United States (40% of GDP in 2009) is comparable to that spent in places like Norway and Germany, without noting the 4% of GDP spent on defense, the fact that 2009 was an aberrant year due to the Stimulus and other measures aimed at the present crisis, the off budget costs for Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fact that the American welfare state spends more on health care due to the absence of a state run system -- i.e. private enrichment by public expenditure. In the end he resorts to the cliched canard that Judt "has done better in America in terms of access and fame than an American of the same caliber would have done in Sweden or Germany. It is still easier to escape from the slums of America than from the banlieues of France."
As we have noted in an earlier thread, escape from the slums in the U.S. is becoming a taller order by the day. Maybe if the Times decided to use an intellectually honest person to review this book, we, the readers, might actually be advised of this fact.
I will not even discuss the choice of George Will to review my friend Rick Perlstein's brilliant Nixonland. Talk about casting pearls before dishonest swine.
