1/30/01 4:20 p.m.
Book ’Em
The National Book Critics Circle award finalists.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

he National Book Critics Circle announced its award finalists today, and conservatives have cause to cheer and to boo.

First, the good news: The 92-year-old Jacques Barzun is up for the criticism award for his mammoth tome, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to Present. Last year, NR's Jeffrey Hart raved about it: "How many times in one's life does one get to welcome a masterpiece, which, without a doubt, this amazing work certainly is? It is so lucid that its 800 pages of text move quickly. With seeming ease, its architecture covers 500 years of Western history, the large movement of the book, and at the same time fills in the great sweep with a richness of detail that gives concrete life to the vast design. Among the particulars there are constant surprises, as in the detail of a Gothic cathedral. The intellectual clarifications come one after the other."

Barzun should blow away the competition and claim his victory on March 12, when the awards are revealed in New York City. The only mystery is why his book wound up in the criticism category, rather than general nonfiction.

And that brings us to the bad news: Frances FitzGerald has been nominated in that category for her anti-Reagan, anti-missile defense, anti-anti-Communist diatribe Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War. Last year, one of your authors wrote an extensive profile and critique of FitzGerald and her book: "Reagan and SDI have long deserved a close examination of the sort they receive from FitzGerald, but Way Out There in the Blue is a tendentious work. Sadly, it now stands as the closest thing there is to an official record of Reagan's SDI program. Historians who aren't yet born will turn their attention to Reagan, and it is this book — for want of any real competition — that threatens to mold their thinking on some of the most significant political conflicts of the 1980s." An early version of this FitzGerald piece may be read online here.

(Addendum: Jay Winik provides something of an antidote to FitzGerald with his excellent On the Brink: The Dramatic, Behind-the-Scenes Saga of the Reagan Era and the Men and Women Who Won the Cold War.)

There's every reason to fear FitzGerald's book will win, hailed as it was in all the correct (i.e., liberal) places. By rights, Barzun's book probably belongs in the general nonfiction category. But even without that entry, there are superior titles in contention for the general nonfiction prize, such as Ted Conover's Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, a provocative account of prison life in New York.

Conservatives tend to treat organizations like the National Book Critics Circle with deep skepticism, and the stance is often appropriate. But that doesn't mean the 700 or so members who vote on these selections aren't capable of making good choices. Back in 1990, the general-nonfiction award went to Shelby Steele's The Content of Our Character, a fine study of America's racial hang-ups, and a book of lasting importance.

The moral here simply may be that more conservatives need to get onboard. The National Book Critics Circle is open to book review editors and reviewers for a membership fee of only $35. Freelancers are welcome. More information may be found here.

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