New Threats to Freedom edited by Adam Bellow

Mostly interesting set of essays

Published in 2010 by Templeton Press

The theme of New Threats to Freedom is, clearly, threats to our freedom. This can be interpreted as America's freedom, Western freedom in general of the freedom of all people throughout the world. Depending on the reader's sensitivities, some of these freedoms may seem trivial (the freedom of ice cream vendors in New York City to sell their wares near city parks, for example) or may seem monumental (back to those same vendors - can you really ban a licensed business from selling his wares just because you don't want to hear your kids whine all day about ice cream?)

The writing is generally high quality but there are a wide variety of styles, themes and issues that make this an uneven read. For example, Stephen Schwartz's essay "Shariah in the West" is mostly an essay about how Shariah is not a threat, but just a media-hyped bogeyman,  followed by a few paragraphs about how it might still be a threat. The "Illusion of Innocence" by Shelby Steele had a similar feel and the last essay by Dennis Whittle, "Orthodoxy and Freedom in International Aid" was more about bureaucratic inertia than any outright threat.

Adam Bellow,
 editor

On the other hand essays such as Greg Lukianoff's "Students Against Liberty?" was very thought-provoking. Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI), the University where I earned my Master's gets a mention on page 139, much to my embarrassment. 

The placement of a very strong essay by Mark Helprin entitled "The Rise of Antireligious Orthodoxy" right before a strong essay on multi-culturalism by Christopher Hitchens (well known for his anti-religious books) makes me smile every time I think of it. Hitchins makes a strong point that we should never fail to confuse individual civil rights with "group" rights in our efforts to be a free society.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: New Threats to Freedom.

Reviewed on November 27, 2010.

Letters To A Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens

Originally published in 2001

Letters To A Young Contrarian is supposed to be a book for young people - I'm assuming by young they mean late high school or college.

I am a high school teacher and I can tell you that Hitchens' repeated use of foreign phrases without translations (such as "saeva indignatio" - p. 8 and "dei sacrificium intellectus" - p. 23 and "cette 'fugutive du camp des vainqueurs'" - pp. 91-2) and his continual references to the 60s and the Cold War without any background will lose nearly every young person who attempts to read it.

If by young, they meant 36 years old, than this 36 year old found the text to be interesting and challenging. However, I have to give it a poor score because he will fail to hit the stated target audience - and he will miss by a long shot.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Letters to a Young Contrarian.

Reviewed on August 21, 2004.