MixedThe New RepublicFukuyama’s new retrospective inadvertently reveals that it’s the liberal democratic model that seems unready for the next century. Able to see the flaws in his system but unwilling to countenance the type of politics that might transcend them, Fukuyama has produced a book emblematic of a \'centrism\' still proudly fighting the last brushfires of the twentieth century long after the wildfires of the twenty-first have swept by them ... Announces not just the latest phase of Fukuyama’s career but the exhaustion of the ideas that career rested on ... On the whole, Fukuyama does not seem properly chastened by the events of the past two decades—mixing a strange complacency about the deeper problems confronting liberal democracy with attacks on straw-men versions of those who seek its reform.
RaveThe New RepublicMesmerizing ... It’s a simple enough story—one that, again, would be easy to romanticize—but as Tamarkin notes, that would be to mistake the perspective of the reporters, of the \'West,\' for the only one ... Avoids telling the story in a straightforward way, one that might overly valorize the correspondents and their trade, using her father’s time in Vietnam instead as a frame for an impressionistic and nonlinear consideration of one day and the way it was understood.
PositiveThe New RepublicAn entertaining history ... Will no doubt help many readers understand the Revolution more completely than they had before. Yet it’s hard not to think that most will also close the book feeling a bit dissatisfied, as if Bell starts his narrative too late and ends it too early ... People should read Bell’s book, certainly, but it also wouldn’t hurt to watch a little Schoolhouse Rock too.
Patrick J Deneen
PanThe New RepublicThe theme throughout the book is that things were simply better before liberalism reared its ugly head ... Particularly frustrating here is Deneen’s praise for the Puritan leader John Winthrop ... Despite Deneen’s claims to be proposing a \"new\" regime, there is little in his work that offers a genuine departure—though its reminder that the Enlightenment was not so neutral as it seems is salutary enough.
