“The book that follows is not a history in the normal sense, but, as the subtitle explains, the history of a controversy. The controversy in question is the one which has raged for many years around the question: What ended Roman civilization and brought about the Dark Ages?”

More at New English Review.

SDA’s own “Captain Capitalism” has written a new guide to protecting your wallet from the evil clutches of Big Education.

“Worthless” should be airlifted and dropped into OWS camps.

So apparently, heavy enough to do proper damage!

In short, “Worthless” is the timeliest book in years that not only explains to a lot of people why they can’t find jobs, but has a nearly incalculable potential for good in that it will prevent future youths from making such a horrendous mistake.
That and it should, in theory, cut off the vital flow of brainwashable children and their tuition dollars into “Big Education.” Which would do more to fight against socialism and tyranny than most realize.

Oh, we realize it all right. You can buy the book at Amazon.

Book reviews in the WSJ:
1) America’s Enduring Ideal

Jeffrey Sachs is only the latest in a long line of thinkers to reject the values of our commercial republic.

2) Burying the Hatchet

The long, arduous and incomplete process of civilizing humankind and suppressing its most violent impulses.

The Man Booker shortlist is here. Two Canadian authors, Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan on it; neither of their books is about Canada or Canadians. A message there?

Yeah, right:

Virginia Cowles: The American who saw Britain at its best
Charles Moore reviews Looking for Trouble by Virginia Cowles (Faber)…
Cowles was most struck, especially when she compared it with the rout of France, by the way the British naturally respected their political leaders, and the way those leaders did, when they finally had to, lead. She also noticed how the British were positively pleased (see above) to be alone, defending their own shores. “I was more than impressed. I was flabbergasted. I not only understood the maxim that ‘England never knows when she is beaten’; I understood why England never had been beaten.”
What would she think now?

Via Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs (“Book Reviews” at end, with further links). Your thoughts?

One step ahead of you, Mr. Steyn…

Tyler writes;

I enjoy your work, SDA is a great place to stop by.
I am looking for reading material for the summer. Do you have a list that you could recommend? May be you have had a post in the past?

That’s pretty open ended, but I thought I’d open it up to our readers – feel free to share your summer book recommendations in the comments.

From Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs:

…
Lives Lived
James Campbell — The Guardian
Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor has died aged 96 – More – More – More

Plus at Arts & Letters Daily (not quite what one might think in terms of leanings–take a look):

Patrick Leigh Fermor, warrior, scholar, autodidact, travel writer, extraordinary raconteur, is dead at 96… Telegraph… Jan Morris… Christopher Hitchens… Robert Kaplan

I’ve read A Time of Gifts : on Foot to Constantinople: from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube and Between the Woods and the Water.

Wonderful books (I hitchhiked around Europe and Morocco when 18).
Update: More at National Review Online:

…As a young man, he’d walked through pre-war Hungary and Romania…Those walks provided the material for books that evoke Central Europe as it then was, now far away and long ago, before politics destroyed the picturesque [truly a vanished world–the Hungarian uppercrust, in whatever post-Trianon county, are marvellous].
…The great and unforgettable exploit was the kidnapping of General Kreipe, the German commanding officer in Crete…At another point as dawn was coming up on Mount Ida, General Kreipe quoted the opening lines of Horace’s ode praising this very snow-capped sight, whereupon Paddy recited the remaining verses.
“Ach so, Herr Major,” was the compliment with which the general ended this exchange, as unexpected as it is chivalrous. Stanley Moss wrote up the whole exploit in a memoir, Ill Met by Moonlight. I could never get Paddy to say much about it, except that he thought the film of the book was not much good. Could there be men like that again?..

Via Publius.

Michael Totten’s The Road To Fatima Gate.

Victor Davis Hanson reviews Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir.

Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy and How the Law Failed All of Us – Christie Blatchford Preorder here.

Update: comments glitch now fixed.