John Lukacs

Latest by John Lukacs in Chronicles

• Blog

  October 18, 2019

  The Reduction of Certainty

  One should begin a review with a summation of a book and then of its author. The reverse is warranted in this case. James Grant is an extraordinary American, a financial expert whose mind is enriched by his knowledge of history. His previous book was an excellent biography of John Adams. It did not receive the recognition it deserves. (But then, in these times and in this world, can one expect recognition from people who have little or no cognition themselves?)

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• Blog

  July 10, 2019

  Grand Designs

  There are many things wrong with this book, beginning with its title. The Liberal Mind is not what this book is about. (Nor were the 1940's and 1950's really a Conservative Age—but let this pass.) It is about the intellection of the New York left. Liberality of mind is a desirable condition—yes, also (and perhaps especially) for political conservatives. It is an overall desideratum and not a term properly applicable to the designation of specific conventicles of intellectuals.

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• Blog

  May 8, 2019

  Letters From Tocqueville

  Alexis de Tocqueville was an immensely prolific writer. His friend Gustave de Beaumont wrote that "for one volume he published he wrote ten; and the notes he cast aside as intended only for himself would have served many writers as text for the printer."

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• Blog

  September 12, 2018

  Clap & Trap

  I had heard about, but not read, "The End of History?" Francis Fukuyama's star-burst essay published in 1989; but I felt a twinge of sympathy for him as his critics chortled and pointed at history rumbling anew: people dancing atop the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union falling to pieces, an American Army flying into Arabia.

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• Blog

  February 26, 2018

  To Hell With Culture

  "The corruption of man," Emerson wrote, "is followed by X the corruption of language." The reverse is true, and a century later Georges Bernanos had it right: "The worst, the most corrupting lies are problems wrongly stated."

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• Society & Culture

  December 2017

  Surrounded by Books

  Surrounded by books has been a main circumstance of my long life. So it is now, near the end of my 94th year, when I am in my large library of perhaps 18,000 books in the western wing of my house in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

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• Blog

  July 24, 2017

  The Condottiere

  We live in an age when biography flourishes, contrary to earlier expectations. The reason for this is the decline of the novel and the rise of popular interest in all kinds of history, and biography belongs within history.

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• Blog

  April 17, 2017

  Dwight Macdonald

  A Rebel in Defense of Tradition is the title of Michael Wreszin's 1994 biography of Dwight Macdonald (1906-1982). It is a very good title, by which I mean something more than a "handle"; it is a precise phrase, a summary properly affixed to the memory of an extraordinary man.

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• Society & Culture

  March 2017

  Public Opinion at the End of an Age

  One symptom of decline and confusion at the end of an age is the prevalent misuse of terms, of designations that have been losing their meanings and are thus no longer real. One such term is public opinion.

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• Reviews

  July 2016

  Dealing With Hitler

  "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning" has received exceptional attention and nearly universal praise. Prof. Timothy Snyder’s knowledge of the holocaust is almost encyclopedic.

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• Reviews

  May 2016

  The Crucial Years

  The evidence of the end of the Cold War around 1990 was clearer than evidence of its beginning had been around, say, 1947. By “Cold War” we mean the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union—not that between the United States and China, which was the outcome of civil war in the latter country.

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• Reviews

  May 2016

  Books in Brief

  Alexis de Tocqueville’s wife was Mary Mottley, an Englishwoman. His biographers have never written more than a couple of sentences about her.

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• Reviews

  April 2016

  Between Fear and Conceit

  H.M. Maisky was the Soviet ambassador to Britain from 1932 to 1943. In June 1943 Stalin ordered him to quit London. After returning to Moscow, Maisky was posted henceforth to unimportant positions.

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• View

  August 2013

  End of the World of Books

  No matter. Next day, my relief was gone. I know that so much of my world has vanished. The world of books.

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• Reviews

  May 2010

  Parallel Lives

  Nicholas Thompson, the grandson of Paul Nitze, chose to write a biography of his grandfather, but with a restriction. Thompson thought it best to describe and compare his grandfather’s public career together with that of another public personage, George Kennan.

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• Reviews

  June 2009

  The Reduction of Certainty

  One should begin a review with a summation of a book and then of its author. The reverse is warranted in this case. James Grant is an extraordinary American, a financial expert whose mind is enriched by his knowledge of history.

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• Reviews

  March 2009

  Diplomacy Before the Fall

  The first two sentences of this fine book tell it all. “This is a text for our times. It is a celebration of diplomacy and diplomats—of an essentially extinct profession.” I shall return to this summa summa rum; but first, here is my account of the contents of this book.

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• Round Table Discussion

  October 2008

  Russian Patriot: Solzhenitsyn’s Preoccupation With History

  Chronicles has asked me “to participate in a roundtable on the contributions and legacy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.” His contributions were of enormous importance. His legacy, perhaps less so.

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• View

  April 2008

  The End of the American Middle Class

  We have now entered a new age which will not have a name or a designation until, I think, at least one or two centuries from now: But then, such is the evolution of historical terminology.

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• View

  August 2006

  Thoughts on Socialism

  One day, perhaps, a great history of socialism will be written. A daunting task, but not impossible, since socialism, the “ism,” is not very old—a relatively new phenomenon, during the last 200 years or even less.

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