To label Kati Marton’s biography of Angela Merkel a hagiography would not be fair—not entirely. That said, when she writes of the chancellor being “too busy saving the world” to have much time for strolling in the woods, the expression may be less of a rhetorical flourish than it should. “The Chancellor” is an impressively researched but, in many respects, devotional work—the reflection of a worshipful establishment consensus that will eventually seem absurd.
Read MoreShutdown, historian Adam Tooze’s new book—which carries the somewhat premature subtitle How Covid Shook the World’s Economy—is billed by its publishers as “a deft synthesis of global finance, politics and business . . . a tour-de-force account of the year that changed everything.” Whether the coronavirus will, when all’s done, have “changed everything” remains to be seen, but Shutdown is well worth reading as an intriguing, thought-provoking study of a period made unique not by a disease—our species has weathered many—but by how we dealt with it.
“Never before,” writes Tooze, “had there been a collective decision, however haphazard and uneven, to shut large parts of the world’s economy down.” He could have taken a more rigorously questioning look at the rights and wrongs of that decision, one of several missteps in the book that range from his cursory examination of the different course adopted by Sweden to his failure to consider whether prolonged shutdowns would have been justifiable had vaccines not been developed so quickly. The vaccine breakthrough casts the draconian measures taken by authorities in a more favorable light than they may deserve. For how much longer would we have had to shelter at home? Years?
But then Shutdown’s author makes no secret of his preference for strong state action…
Read MoreThe Viking Heart, the latest work by the historian Arthur Herman, is engaging, informative, and highly readable. As Herman deals with four separate topics each of which deserves a book of its own, it is also an extremely ambitious undertaking. His reach may sometimes exceed his grasp, but even when that is the case the results are likely to leave readers wanting more — in a good way.
The first topic, taking up a third or so of The Viking Heart’s text, is a history of the “classic” Viking era. The second is a discussion of what happened next — the Vikings did not just vanish into nothingness when the longships ceased setting sail. The third touches on the Scandinavian experience in America. The fourth, which is more of a thread running through the book, is an examination of what Herman dubs “the Viking heart,” character traits (mercifully somewhat evolved since that heart began beating) that, in his view, contributed so much to the development of these northern peoples and the impact they have had far beyond the fjords, forests, and lakes of their homelands.
Read MoreThe coalition-building that follows a German election can take quite some time, but regardless of who becomes the country’s next chancellor (almost certainly the Social Democratic Party’s Olaf Scholz), one thing is undeniable: The descent of the center-right CDU/CSU to its lowest-ever share of the vote puts two defining characteristics of outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel — tactical brilliance and strategic blindness — into uncomfortable perspective.
Read MoreI was infinitely more fortunate than many, many people, but my Wednesday evening still did not go entirely as planned. I emerged from a cinema to find a downpour, the subway down, and that cabs were nowhere to be seen. Passing on the chance to join a sodden group sheltering in an ATM zone, I trudged the 25 or so blocks home, thinking about . . . infrastructure.
Read MoreA week or so ago, Lucian A. Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal in which they complained that the notorious (my description, not theirs) redefinition of the purpose of a corporation contained in a statement by the Business Roundtable (BRT) in August 2019 was something of a sham. By introducing the new definition, the BRT abandoned its earlier support for shareholder primacy — the idea that a company should be run, above all, for the benefit, shockingly, of the shareholders who own it — in favor of the assertion that a company should be managed in a way that takes proper account of the interests of various “stakeholders” of which shareholders were only one category.
Despite this, Bebchuk and Tallarita maintained that very little had really changed…
Read MoreNo government — particularly one with only a shaky claim to legitimacy, none of it democratic — will ever enjoy a sudden drop in its country’s standard of living. That is something the Taliban may shortly discover as they try to consolidate their hold over a society famously fragmented along ethnic lines. Terror reinforced by purloined American weaponry may work, at least for a while. And yes, the universalist pretensions of the Taliban’s Islamism will win over some hearts and minds, as will the order, however harsh, that their form of Sharia brings with it. Nevertheless, if the Taliban, a movement still strongest in its Pashtun heartland, come into too abrasive a conflict with the traditional loyalties of other Afghans to their kith, kin, and tribe, they may struggle.
Read MoreIt’s obvious — if not necessarily to the Biden administration — that the success of a nation’s foreign policy depends, in part, on its ability to shape the way in which it is seen abroad. The U.S. was able to ensure the survival of West Berlin — a highly vulnerable exclave — throughout the Cold War in no small part because the Kremlin could never be certain how fiercely America would react if the Soviets attempted to take over the western half of that divided city by force. The Berlin Airlift was an early and remarkable display of support, but the dispatch at the same time of three B-29 bomber groups, which may or may not have been in a position to initiate a nuclear strike, to the U.K. may also have helped persuade Stalin to take things no further. To work, deterrence must be credible. The American, British, and French troops stationed in West Berlin for decades were no more than a tripwire, but Moscow could only speculate about what would follow from triggering it. It never took the risk.
Read MoreSo, first Richard Branson and now Jeff Bezos have made their quick joyrides into space (or its neighborhood: in Branson’s case, it depends on whom you ask) and, critically, back. The flights were a victory lap of sorts for science, human ingenuity, and immense entrepreneurial drive. Not everyone was pleased.
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