Current Events Not only is such an approach methodologically unsound, it is unhelpful. This problem may arise partly from Vaisse’s refusal to place neo-conservatism where it belongs, as the latest and most extreme form of the democratic Utopianism that some academics describe as Wilsonian, though it predates the 28th President running all the way back to the first stirrings of the Republic. One possible explanation is Vaisse’s apparent desire to stand on both sides of various divides, with assertions like “neoconservatism is such a diverse thing that the term has always been close to meaningless,” (which, if true, leaves one wondering why he believes it can be written about coherently in the first place). He at once condemns those who paint neoconservatism as a fundamentally Jewish movement, yet in his conclusion claims it to be “first and foremost an attempt by certain Jewish intellectuals to rationalize…their alienation” and “a classic pattern…of the last to be admitted to society’s elite ranks attempted to shut the door behind them.” This misses the mark. Neocon founders like Kristol and Nathan Glazer flirted with Trotskyism at CCNY and, just as they accepted that militant utopian ideology, so they and their intellectual progeny find
Biographies & Memoirs Memoirs of a Wannabe Sex Addict By Julia Morizawa Fanny Press, $14.95, 151 pages Here is a collection of erotic short stories, stories every woman might have, but not stories every woman will necessarily tell. Intelligent erotica covering fear, power, dominance, an inability to speak, Julia Morizawa’s beautiful prose and haunting images explore women and men in their search for understanding, love, sex, and belonging. It’s a twenty-something’s second coming-ofage story, wrapped in prose that captures the sense of confusion of a generation. “My pimp called several times before I finally responded and paid him a visit.” Through these brutally honest sex-capades, this collection of memoirs, true or not for the author but ringing true for women, is a snapshot of life, sex, and accompanying
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vulnerabilities, complexities, and relationship experiences that force people to grow, prompting them on the path to change. From The Slave’s fear of love to The Addict’s desire to impress her pimp to The Girlfriend on her first romantic date with a man and her innocent hope for the possibility of love, Morizawa’s debut collection of erotica is an impressive read with an array of identifiable characters connecting to the darker side of the feminine. Reviewed by Axie Barclay Silent Tears By Kay Bratt AmazonEncore, $10.77, 323 pages Kay Bratt was your typical American mom. Married with two daughters, a career, and a loving circle of family and friends, it seemed like nothing could frazzle this seemingly ideal American Dream. Her husband was asked to head his company’s expansion into China, so the family packed
up and made the move halfway around the world. Acculturation was difficult for all, but Kay needed a something to do to fill her time. She decided to volunteer at a local orphanage. Silent Tears is a series of Kay’s journal entries throughout her time in a Chinese orphanage. She witnessed children dying simply because they weren’t fed, babies with life threatening heart complications, and the ever common sufferings of the cleft palate and cleft lip babies. In China, it is common to just abandon your baby at the local train station, or if their medical bills are too expensive, just walk away from them at the hospital. Babies are left in their cribs for almost the entire day leaving the backs of their heads flat, all fed with the same bottles which transfers viruses much quicker, and bathed in cold water. Kay slowly gained the trust of the organization, pulled together many volunteers, and with millions of dollars in donations, slowly began to raise the standards to which they treated the children and provided medical treatment. The book is gut wrenching, but leaves the reader with the idea that change is possible no matter the obstacles. Reviewed by Jennifer LeBrun
appeal in a similarly utopian nationalist millennial movement, albeit one that sees democracy rather than class equality as its ultimate perfection. This ideology combined well with other similar beliefs, such as a faith in the justice of absolutist meritocracy. In the wake of the Bush Administration’s departure, the Neoconservative movement has badly fractured. Some, like Francis Fukuyama, have moved into the realist camp, while others like David Brooks have taken on a more suspicious Burkian view of any grand enterprise. Stalwarts like Kristol and Dan Senor have instead doubled down, arguing instead that the failure of the Iraq enterprise resulted not from a strategic miscalculation, but from tactical blunders. One thing is certain, the neocons are not gone from the stage of American politics, nor will they be the last movement to embrace Wilsonian Universalist principles, and we should understand them for what they are, not based on such vague “biographies” as this one. Reviewed by Jordan Magill
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servatives’ opposition to Clinton and their prominence under Bush 43. Unfortunately, this neat division is far from persuasive. On the first age, does it logically follow that because neo-conservatives critiqued the welfare state, all critics of the welfare state were necessarily neo-Conservatives? Vaisse bases his assertion of this association on Nathan Glazer’s writing, a curious choice since elsewhere he seems less inclined to take neocons at their word. Yet if one were to presume that all those who rejected a centralized welfare model were neocons, then the roles would be so long and varied, from Bill Clinton to John McCain to Tony Blair, as to make the term meaningless. The same might be said of the “Second Age:” if every anti-Communist democrat in the 1970s was a neocon, it leaves little room for thoughtful analysis. Scoop Jackson and Irving Kristol were both members of the CDM, but this doesn’t mean that they were both neo-conservatives. As Jackson was fond of pointing out, he saw communism much as had Truman and Kennedy. Does this mean that they were neoconservatives, too? Failing to offer a consistent definition, Vaisse often lurches disturbingly close to an approach and language that carries a whiff of McCarthyism, complete with “fellow travelers” and brands doled out based on one’s associations (“are you now or have you ever been a member of the CDM? Have you ever contributed to Commentary?”).
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Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement By Justin Vaisse; Translated by Arthur Goldhammer Harvard University Press, $35.00, 366 pages Throughout Neoconservatism: Biography of a Movement, the author Justin Vaisse never offers a concise definition of “neoconservative,” instead floating between several, remaining ever frustratingly vague. One gets the sense that Vaisse feels much as Justice Potter Stewart felt about pornography, he can’t describe neoconservativism, but he knows it when he sees it. His choice of where to apply the label is a Rorschach test: Scoop Jackson was as was Pat Moynihan (until he changed his mind), as was Al Gore. Dick Cheney wasn’t (but some of his best friends were), while Ronald Reagan is a toss-up. If this sounds a bit like a party game (name that neo-conservative!), it isn’t the only one offered by Vaisse’s book. Another, perhaps even more entertaining one can be played by counting how many times he uses the words Jewish and Trotskyite in the book (double points if in the same sentence). Vaisse postulates three neoconservative“ ages”: the first, from the mid-60’s to 1972, when a few liberals opposed the centralized welfare state of the Great Society; the second, runs from McGovern’s defeat, through the formation of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM) to the election of Bush 41; and the third being neocon-
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