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Walter C Uhler » Archive

Igor Sutyagin and I. F. Stone: Spies?

June 15th, 2009 | Add a Comment

A Review of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev My first and only meeting with Igor Sutyagin occurred on 7 September 1998, in what was then the Taiga Café of Moscow’s Aerostar Hotel. A senior scholar in the Department for Military-Political Studies at the Institute for the USA and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sutyagin was given the task of dining with an American “People to People” delegation – of which I was a member – and briefing its members on the economic crisis ravaging Russia since its catastrophic default just three weeks earlier. Although we peppered Igor with questions about Russia’s economic collapse, his answers … Read entire article »

Filed under: Book Reviews, Russian History

Last Rites for the United States, and Himself

March 2nd, 2009 | Add a Comment

A Review of Last Rites, by John Lukacs In 1990, at the age of sixty-five, John Lukacs wrote a well-received “auto-history” entitled Confessions of an Original Sinner. Now, almost twenty years later, Mr. Lukacs has given his readers part two: Last Rites. The book not only appears to constitute a valedictory for an erudite and influential 85 year old man — who admits that his curiosity, reading and appetite for life are weakening — but also the swan song for the five hundred years of European culture carried forward, until recently, by the United States. Which is to say that Mr. Lukacs sees signs of America’s decadence all around: academics who neither buy nor read books, the widespread decline of serious reading, “the … Read entire article »

Filed under: Book Reviews, Christianity

Legacies? How About “Good Riddance to the Swine?”

January 15th, 2009 | Add a Comment

Tony Auth’s political cartoon in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s January 14th edition is the quintessential picture that is worth a thousand words. It tells you almost everything you need to know about the uniquely evil Bush/Cheney regime — i.e., its lies about Saddam Hussein’s WMD, its illegal torture at Abu Ghraib, its illegal wiretaps, its pathetically immoral and incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina, its ideological trashing of politically incorrect scientific findings, its oversight failures, which contributed to Wall Street’s collapse and Cheney’s devilish torching of the Constitution. Moreover, it deftly pencils in the world’s feeble response to such evil: the hurling of shoes at Bush from all corners. As such, Mr. Auth’s cartoon serves as a one-stop reminder of the … Read entire article »

Filed under: Bush Administration, Politics