Review
Walter Russell Mead starts his
serious book with a joke, and it's a funny one, not
to mention smart, which bodes well for the book
itself, as it shows Mead taking us into his
confidence: a writer telling witty tales that assume
intelligence in his readers
.
God and Gold is engaging in the extreme, which
you can't say of most books spanning more than 350
years of history with an emphasis on religion,
politics and money. This is a weighty book with both
historical and contemporary import, starting with
Oliver Cromwell and ending with George W. Bush.
In Part I Mead makes his case for the dominance of
England and America since both became nations,
indeed empires, in their own unique and intimately
connected ways. He...
Beyond the Book
The Linking Threads of God
and Gold
As you might expect with a book
about history, there's plenty of
interesting points to highlight
and even more for readers to
birddog; but Mead is so
polyhistoric in his knowledge
and so profligate with his
references, moving easily from
Matthew Arnold to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
it's hard to choose where to
begin. Do we send you to Captain
Bligh or William F. Buckley,
Jr.? Macaulay or Thoreau?
Rumsfeld or Thackeray? Shall we
offer more on Calvinists or...
