Books in Brief
Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle over School Choice by Clint Bolick (Cato, 219 pp., $12). School choice is the unfinished part of the civil-rights movement–or so claims Clint Bolick in “Voucher Wars.” A founder of the Institute for Justice, Bolick recounts the long battle to promote school choice. In the courts, that fight has produced a recent Supreme Court victory. In the forum of public opinion, however, the fight still rages, and to persuade the reader, Bolick writes of his many visits to the inner cities and the rural towns struggling with crumbling schools, recalcitrant unions, and ineffective bureaucracies. With all this in sight, Bolick makes a compelling case for the legality of vouchers and argues that their implementation would secure educational opportunities for children from poor families and improve the dire situation of the public education system. By the end of “Voucher Wars,” the reader is left wondering why school choice didn’t win out long ago.
–Ben Kutler
The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values by Tammy Bruce (Prima, 341 pp., $25.95). In “The Death of Right and Wrong,” Tammy Bruce declares that morals are under vicious attack by feminist, gay, and black special-interest groups–which is a curious thing to hear from a self-proclaimed lesbian feminist and former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women. Arguing that right and wrong are frighteningly blurred by groups who use their “victimhood” to further their own agendas, Bruce takes out after what she calls “malignant narcissists”: the feminists who bemoaned the Andrea Yates verdict, for instance, and groups who promote the “sexualization” of young children.
“Theirs is a world,” she writes, “of self-gratification that requires an end to personal responsibility. Values, decency, and knowing right from wrong–and having the courage to act on that knowledge–are all verboten.” At once fierce and compassionate, Bruce shows a real flair for giving advice: “Ignorance sustains the moral relativists, and knowledge is to them as water is to the Wicked Witch of the West. I think it’s time we invited them to take a swim.”
–Erin Montgomery
The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions edited by Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (Touchstone, 736 pp., $16). Most public-policy anthologies are a bore–either too slight in substance or too academic in tone. Not so “The Iraq War Reader.” It combines polemics with solid policy statements; forceful opinion pieces with scholarly analyses. Readers will find in its pages key documents, speeches, and essays that give depth to the debate about American policy toward Iraq. The reader covers the period from before the First Gulf War through the more recent debate over what America’s role should be in the Middle East and the world at-large once Saddam has been removed from power. And there is no significant topic–Saddam himself, weapons of mass destruction, inspections, or wars of preemption–not touched on. In 1991, Sifry and Cerf edited a similar volume, “The Gulf War Reader.” Like that old reader, this new one strives to be a compendium and a record of the debate and issues as they have unfolded.
Of course, in any anthology of this kind, there are bound to be a number of pieces that will drive Weekly Standard readers nuts. And, conversely, there are essays and op-eds that will undoubtedly put Nation subscribers into low-earth orbit. But there are plenty of selections–such as the transcript of American ambassador April Glaspie’s meeting with Saddam Hussein in July 1990 and President Bush’s West Point commencement address in June 2002–that anyone interested in the contours of a turning point in American national security will want to have in hand.
–Gary Schmitt
