The Generals Aren't Necessarily Right
Thomas E. Ricks, the author of Fiasco and The Gamble, is a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and author of Foreign Policy magazine’s Best Defense blog. He was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post for a total of 26 years.
As Obama postpones a decision on Afghanistan, he should remember FDR's lessons: bring the country along. Rushing has downsides. And dithering costs troops more than you know.
This Week's Hot Reads
The Daily Beast is dedicated to news and commentary, culture, and entertainment. We carefully curate the web’s most essential stories and bring you original must-reads from our talented contributors.
This week: Cold Warriors, druggie Scottish lit, a man who believes he's Christopher Columbus, an insider account of the Lehman collapse, and a Mad Ave memoir.
Glenn Beck's Mob Rule
John P. Avlon writes a column for The Daily Beast and is author of the forthcoming Attack of the Wingnuts, to be published in January by Beast Books. He is also the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
Republicans are now benefiting from the tens of thousands of angry white people who descended on Washington over the weekend-but they've tapped into something ugly that they can't control, says John Avlon.
A Censorship Test for China
Peter Osnos is a senior fellow for media at The Century Foundation. Osnos is the founder and editor at large of PublicAffairs Books. He is vice chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review, a former publisher at Random House, and was a correspondent and editor at the Washington Post.
Peter Osnos peruses a Beijing bookstore and finds that they also read Lolita in Beijing-but Marx and Stalin collect dust.
World War II's Team of Rivals
New York Times bestselling author Michael Korda's books include Ike, Horse People, Country Matters, Ulysses S. Grant, and Charmed Lives.
If you want to learn how the Allies really won the war, Andrew Roberts' impeccable new history retraces the secret meetings between FDR and Churchill.
I.F. Stone Was No Spy
Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals.
Today's news cycle brings "proof" that legendary journalist I.F. Stone was a Soviet spy. Stone's friend and Daily Beast contributor Eric Alterman dissects a decades-old tale that won't go away.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is a book that I always recommend to friends. It is about the Devil paying a visit to 1930s Moscow. The characters he writes of are striving to understand and navigate this rigidly structured ...
Seamus Dever plays Detective Kevin Ryan, a young Homicide cop, in the new ABC show Castle, airing Mondays at 10 PM. Seamus is best known to television audiences as Dr. Getti on Lifetime’s Army Wives and Dr. Ian on ABC’s General Hospital. He has other notable guest star appearances on CSI, Cold Case, Charmed, Close To Home, Without A Trace, CSI: Miami, Ghost Whisperer, Mad Men, CSI: New York, JAG, and NCIS. His feature film work includes Hollywoodland and the indie comedy Ready or Not.
Elliott Roosevelt's book As He Saw It is a must-read that includes intimate conversations with his dad at key moments of World War II. The pages tell of meetings with Stalin, Churchill, and others, and show the elder Roosevelt setting ou...
Oliver Stone is a film director and screenwriter. He wrote and directed Platoon, drawing on his Vietnam experience; it was followed by movies such as Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Natural Born Killers, Nixon and W.
Stalin Voted 3rd Best Russian
In a Russian poll to determine the country's greatest historical figure, Josef Stalin came in third. Who came in first and second? See this ITN report to find out.
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Martin Jacques is the cofounder of the UK think tank Demos, writes a regular column for The Guardian, and is a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. His new book, When China Rules the World, is available now.
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
Jeffrey Koterba is an acclaimed syndicated political cartoonist. Since joining the Omaha World-Herald in 1989, he has been a finalist for Editorial Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society and has placed second in the National Headliner Awards. His work is distributed through King Features Syndicate to 400 newspapers nationwide, and has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post, among others.
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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