Alan J. Levine

Latest by Alan J. Levine in Chronicles

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  August 2020

  Dropping the Ball on the Bomb

  There is still a lot of confusion surrounding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For many years, the issue was distorted by those more concerned with politics and ideology than with truth. An honest verdict on the atomic bomb must be mixed.

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• Reviews

  April 1993

  Every Man a Victim

  An acquaintance of mine, who is not particularly conservative, once heard a television newsman quack about how bad the 1950's were. Disgusted, he burst out, "What was wrong with the 1950's?

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• Reviews

  July 1992

  The Dictator and the Scoundrel

  To anyone old enough to recall the early 1960's, the names Kennedy and Khrushchev will provoke a wealth of emotional associations far stronger than those evoked by the names of most later Presidents, or of the colorless characters who followed Khrushchev as rulers of the Soviet Union.

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• Reviews

  December 1991

  Theses and Antitheses

  American liberals have long been troubled by a sinister force lurking in our society, namely conservatism. Albert O. Hirschman's motive in writing The Rhetoric of Reaction is to explain this phenomenon to his fellow liberals.

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• Reviews

  August 1991

  Studies in Tyranny

  Nearly half a century after their destruction, Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler remain the objects of greater attention and hatred than do Stalin and his Soviet Union, although the extent of their crimes were similar and Stalin's regime was in some ways the more complex and challenging phenomenon.

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• Reviews

  June 1991

  Visions and Revisions

  In his latest book, John Lukacs returns to some of the same territory that he covered in one of his finest works, The Last European War. Here he has concentrated on the critical period in which the Nazis conquered Western Europe and in which the fortunes of the Allies reached their nadir, but in which Britain's opposition to Hitler crystallized.

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• Reviews

  May 1991

  The Key to Victory

  John Ellis, a well-known British military historian, has made a major contribution to our understanding of the nature of World War II with an unflattering reappraisal of the effectiveness and leadership of the Allied forces.

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• Bookshelves

  July 1985

  The Big Surprise

  Charles Murray's book is a study of some of the biggest, and perhaps the least excusable, social problems facing American society.

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• Bookshelves

  March 1985

  Commendables – Schools for Scandal

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• Imported

  March 1985

  Commendables – Mother of Her Country

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• Bookshelves

  March 1985

  Commendables – Last Rites

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• Bookshelves

  March 1985

  Commendables – Troubled Sleep

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• Opinions & Views

  August 1984

  Bombs Away

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• View

  February 1984

  Constructive Criticism — Sometimes

  Hook offers no real explanation for the West's decline and the "collapse of its morality." He is clearly anguished and puzzled by it, though he rightly does not despair. Still, without an explanation, the book suffers.

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• Opinions & Views

  January 1984

  Twisting & Turning Totalitarianism

  1984 Revisited; Edited by Irving Howe; Harper & Row; New York.

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• Imported

  December 1983

  Twinkle, Twinkle

  These three works deal with aspects of what will be a crucial problem of the next generation: the exploitation of space travel and its effect on the arms race.

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