The Perfect Gift

The Children of Reagan wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas. We've compiled a list of our favorite 2004 selections, just in case you cannot find the perfect gift (for dad of course!).

All our best.

Stephen Braunlich:

Where do you combine the works of America's pre-eminent conservative, the autobiography of an adventurer, and a history of the conservative movement? The answer is in the pages of Miles Gone By, William F. Buckley's literary autobiography.

Looking for an adventure story? Read his descriptions of racing up and down the Atlantic or the passage on an early and shortlived life as a pilot. Want to know where the movement has come from? You can track it from the founding of National Review through today and read about all the important individuals in between.

Get a copy for the conservative in your life here: http://www.nationalreview.com/store/book_wfb.asp

Anastazia:

"There is, I think, a vision of the world in which the profound pluralism that separates people and also the profound unity in basic rights and dignity that holds us together can be formulated in terms that make cultural, economic, and politcal sense. I call this imaginary City, to which human imagination always draws us, Caritapolis. With perhaps more boldness than wisdom, I try next to present a sketch of it, an outline, a conceptual frame."

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Michael Novak’s The Universal Hunger for Liberty, in the words of one of his reviewers, “cements his position as America’s foremost conservative philosopher." This ambitious book tackles the most pressing issues of the 21st century, ranging from environmentalism to terrorism to human rights, always keeping in mind the principle of freedom as the guiding agent for change. Novak reviews the motivations for this liberty held in common by all people, particularly through the prisms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He argues, in defiance of conventional wisdom, that “the clash of civilizations is not inevitable.” Give your loved ones the perfect Christmas gift this year: a justification to hope for eventual peace on earth, and goodwill towards all.

Eats, Shoots, & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Lynne Truss

Review by Anastazia M. E. Skolnitsky

"The beta-carotene in carrots, peaches and other foods can make you see better and you're [sic] times will improve." - Runner's World

Examples of bad grammar abound in our hurried society. Lovers of the English language suffer severe consternation when confronted with those who don't feel it worth their time to learn the rules of proper punctuation. One history professor once told my class about his friends, whom he referred to as "the Apostrophe Police." This madcap group of English professors drove around in their spare time looking for errors on signs in shop windows. When one was identified, they would march into the store and inform the unsuspecting proprietor of the offense.

The Apostrophe Police and their sympathizers around the globe now have a new book written just for them: Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. They will empathize with the despair felt by the observer of this now-infamous recommendation:

As author Lynne Truss proudly declares in her introduction, "some of us were born to be punctuation vigilantes."

The title of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves refers to a joke about a misguided panda turned to violence by a "badly punctuated wildlife manual." Truss uses this example toher delightful, entertaining romp through the history and rules of English punctuation. (Who invented the semi-colon? When does "its" require an apostrophe? What is an Oxford comma?) She passionately defends the language against the ignorance that has led to its current state of degradation.

The author's cause is a daunting one, considering that we are "on the road to punctuation anarchy." The only solution is to bravely take up arms (preferably a red pen and Wite-Out™) and put those pesky excess apostrophes where they belong. This book comes like a vision in the wilderness to isolated grammar wonks, encouraging them to embrace their inner editor. Throughout the chapters, Truss sounds the rallying cry: "Sticklers Unite!"

Truss, however, is not a snob. She wants to help. Think of her as a proponent of big-tent grammar; her objective is to expand the ranks of the literate. For those who do not know where to place a comma, she advises:

...commas are used in the following situations…in a list...before dialogue…[or] to mark out additional information.

If the simplicity of these rules seems striking, it is because this was once standard instruction for elementary school students. Sadly, this is no longer the norm. Truss reflects on her own education: "[W]e had been taught Latin, French, and German grammar; but English grammar was something" students were supposed to know intuitively. This book is a remedy for the years of neglect suffered by students of the English language. Americans will notice that the author's instruction pertains to the Queen's English, but the rules largely hold fast in the United States as well.

Truss argues that this topic is especially timely, given the democratization of writing in the age of the Internet. It is quite frightening that anyone, even yours truly, can claim to be a critic in cyberspace, imposing both our opinions and our grammatical errors on the masses of innocents online. Truss critiques the use of emoticons, dashes and slashes in place of clear, correctly-punctuated English.Despite being a precise, informed authority on the matter, Truss does make allowances for style. She concedes that with the proliferation of different rules, punctuation is sometimes merely a matter of taste. The important issue, she instructs, is to know the rules thoroughly so that you properly bend them.

While poking fun at self-important grammar busybodies and radicals, Truss makes a compelling case for more thoughtful punctuation, provided by the author as a courtesy to the reader. Truss compares good punctuation to good manners:

Good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves.

Anyone who wants to write more considerately, and have fun learning how to do so, should read this book.

Matt Sitman:

Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow

Hamilton - the most intellectually gifted of our Founding Fathers - has not always been treated kindly by history. With this splendid volume, however, Chernow provides a convincing reassessment of a man whose genius ranged from military strategy to the law to finance. A number of controversies are - or rather, should be - settled in this book, with Chernow carefully exploring both sides of many of the contentious issues in previous Hamilton scholarship and ultimately providing his opinion based on years of research. This is the definitive Hamilton biography of our generation and it belongs on the bookshelf of every thinking student of American political history.

Amanda Harder:

The Pentagon's New Map; War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century

Thomas P.M. Barnett

This is a great book for anyone who wants to better understand one (very influential) man's explanation of the movement of our country and it's motives and militaristic objectives in the years to come.

Common Sense

Thomas Paine

An oldie but goodie. If you have never read it...give it a look. It is always important to keep abreast of the ideas of our foundation so that we can more successfully more into the present.