Recent Reads to Recommend

For a sobering work of nonfiction, Theodore Dalrymple's Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses is a must read. It is a selection of his essays on the decline of British society. Written prior to the London riots of 2011, it reads quite prophetic now.

Mr. Dalrymple writes what are quite simply brilliant and erudite essays. He can draw on a classical education that seems to effortlessly move from how Shakespeare matters today, to Virginia Wolf and the removal of moral constraints on the British working classes and beyond. His work is a joy to read and you cannot fail to enjoy his prose and learn something new in each and every chapter.

His writing is a fantastic commentary on Britain today and how it came to be the place where Great Britain used to be.

Highly recommended if you want to understand what happens when a bunch of progressives grab ahold of a culture and give it a hard left twist.

In the Fiction Department, I just finished Tom Kratman's Countdown: The Liberators



Countdown certainly does feature much of what Tam describes in her review of it as construction porn - the building and staffing of a Regiment, its base camp and all sorts of interesting accoutrements needed for the mission. It is a fast-paced read with some pretty funny one-liners throughout.

Among the construction and deconstruction action sequences, the book has a lot of rather biting commentary on history and world affairs today.

Kratman's commentary ranges from commentary on progressives and the results of their activities, to piracy and how to rather decisively deal with it, to gays in the military. Think the lighter serious bits of Dalrymple combined with high explosive.

Highly recommended for a fun light read.