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33 Questions About American History. By Tom Woods Pop historian and professional scholar Thomas E. Woods seems to come out with a new book on average of twice a year. His latest 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed To Ask is out just in time for the Fourth. Bestselling author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, Woods punctures some of the most popular misconceptions and outright myths about American History. He poses 33 questions for which the typcical answers are either misleading, grossly unsatisfactory or demonstrably false. Did Bill Clinton really stop a genocide in Kosovo? Did Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal lift the United States out of the Depression? Did the Pilgrims flourish in America thanks to Indian agricultural wisdom? Is it true that during World War II "Americans never had it so good?" Was the Civil War about slavery? Some of the answers are bound to surprise. -- July 3, 2007 [ Available from Amazon.com ] 
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Counterpoints. By Roger Kimball & Hilton Kramer If you haven't yet heard of The New Criterion, you've been missing out, but it's not too late. For the past 25 years The New Criterion has been an energetic ally in the battle against cultural, artistic and intellectual amnesia. Co-editors Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer have brought out Counterpoints, a compilation of critical essays drawn from the magazine's most astute and entertaining cultural observers, covering controversial topics such as the Islamization of Europe, Christophobia, historical revisionism, abstract art, and the epidemiology of evil. Contributors include Brooke Allen, Anthony Daniels, Theodore Dalrymple, James Bowman, Joseph Epstein, Laura Jacobs, Cynthia Ozick, Mordecai Richler, Mark Steyn and many others. -- June 28, 2007 [ Available at Amazon.com ]
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Marriage and Caste in America. By Kay S. Hymowitz Kay S. Hymowitz, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, has produced an excellent and informative study on the effects of the "revolutionary experiment to redefine marriage." For forty years now, Americans have been buying into the idea that the rearing of children (Hymowitz calls it "The Mission") can be separated from the institution of marriage. The results of the experiment are in -- and the they're not pretty. Particularly eye-raising is the fact that the hardest hit by the redefinition of marriage are the poor, especially African Americans, who are disproportionately affected by family breakdown and cultural meltdown. -- June 27, 2007 [ Available at Amazon.com ]
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Are We Rome? By Cullen Murphy The U.S. is more like ancient Rome than we may want to acknowledge. Like the Romans, we share an increasingly complacent citizenry, a powerful military, but not nearly enough people willing to fill its ranks, a habit of contracting much of our government's work to private interests, immigration problems and immigrant communities that make us fearful, rapidly declining morals, and a prideful ignorance about the outside world -- and our power in it. Like the Romans, we see ourselves as the center of the world and can't imagine how we look in the eyes of others. In Are We Rome? Cullen Murphy argues that the United States will fall in exactly the same way, and in fact the process may have already begun. The big question: can it be reversed? -- June 25, 2007 [ Available at Amazon.com ]
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The Dragon's Trail. By Joanna Pitman Joanna Pitman delivers a fascinating microhistory of Raphael's famous painting "St. George and the Dragon" and the colorful list of historical figures who have owned it in The Dragon's Trail: The Biography of Raphael's Masterpiece. Commissioned in 1506 by the Duke of Urbino as a thank you gift for King Henry VII, the masterpiece passed through the hands of King Charles I, Piere Crozat, and Catherine the Great before Joseph Stalin illegally sold it to Andrew Mellon, one of the richest Americans at the time. The Dragon's Trail takes readers on a journey that spans centuries of power play and intrigue, making this painting a witness to the rise and fall of the great powers of the Western world and seducing its owners to ever greater heights of corruption and greed. -- June 22, 2007 [ Available at Amazon.com ]
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Consumed. By Benjamin R. Barber Benjamin Barber asserts that in place of the Protestant work ethic once associated with capitalism -- encouraging self-restraint, preparation for the future, protection of and self-sacrifice for children and community, and other characteristics of adulthood -- we are constantly being seduced into what he calls an "infantilist" ethic of consumption. The result is a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers -- and where the primary goal is no longer to manufacture goods but needs. Ultimately, he suggests, our impulses as consumers are forever in conflict with our convictions as citizens. -- June 20, 2007 [ Available at Amazon.com ]
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God's Continent. By Philip Jenkins Responding to dire warnings about the death of Christianity in Europe, Philip Jenkins offers a more measured assessment of Europe's religious future. While acknowledging current tensions, Jenkins holds that predictions of a Muslim-dominated Europe are based on politically convenient myths: that Europe is being imperiled by floods of Muslim immigrants, exploding Muslim birth rates, and the demise of European Christianity. He points out that Muslims are not the only new immigrants in Europe. Christians from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe are also pouring into the Western countries, bringing with them a vibrant religious faith that is transforming the face of European Christianity. -- June 19, 2007 [ Available at Amazon.com ]
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