How Michelle Rhee Misled Education Reform
A memoir illustrates what's wrong with her brand of school reform
The other day I picked up a copy of The Adventures of Augie March. I hadn’t remembered that Saul Bellow, writing in the early 1950s, when he was not yet forty, about Chicago in the 1920s, had been in full sympathy with the urban poor, as he definitely was not later in his career. READ MORE >>
Barack Obama, Supportable and Inscrutable
Barack Obama: The StoryBy David Maraniss (Simon & Schuster, 641 pp., $32.50) READ MORE >>
The Will to Believe
Decision Points By George W. Bush (Crown, 497 pp., $35) The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment Edited by Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton University Press, 386 pp., $29.95) George W. Bush and the Redemptive Dream: A Psychological Portrait By Dan P. McAdams (Oxford University Press, 274 pp., $29.95) READ MORE >>
Reed in the Wind
Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics by Ralph Reed (The Free Press, 311 pp., $25) The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore (W.W. Norton, 191 pp., $22) READ MORE >>
The Power, The Glory, The Media, The Men, The Money, The Irony, The Symbols, America, The Meaning of It All.
The Powers That Be by David Halberstam (Knopf; $15) READ MORE >>
Protégé Power
Even if you’ve never heard of such a thing as a special assistant, you probably have seen one or two of them. When a cabinet secretary or some other great man of government is shown on the evening news testifying before a congressional committee, you usually can see an earnest-looking and well-turned-out young man or woman positioned behind and slightly to the right of him, who whispers in his ear or passes a note every now and then. That’s his special assistant. READ MORE >>
