Mixed for the day

Alan Wolfe has a doozy of a negative review up at the New Republic. It starts with:

Let’s get my judgment of Thomas Sowell’s new book out of the way first. There is not a single interesting idea in its more than three-hundred pages.

It doesn't get any nicer.

This is cool. A Striped Armchair blog has a map of all the places the blogger has visited this year, via books that is.

This is fun. Rick Perlstein talks with Gary Wills about his new book on Presidential power and how it got so out of control. Wills believes it started with Leslie Groves and the Manhattan Project. He traces the massive, and as he argues extra-constitutional, national security state to this period. You have to register to read it, but you probably should anyway.

Also at Bookforum, there is word of a new Peter Straub. When he is good, he is really good. Here's hoping.

Judge a Book By Its Cover has an interesting one up, namely Razor Wire Pubic Hair. The description is just amazing.