Three top Washington thinkers have new books, all much more readable than their physical weight and subject matter suggest. Daniel Yergin engagingly weaves together the economy and the war on terror in a way few historians have done. Thomas L. Friedman, with Michael Mandelbaum, argues that the US is failing to confront the challenges of globalization. Christopher Hitchens returns with about 100 of his best recent essays. Here’s a comparison of these intellectual heavyweights.
Daniel Yergin, The Quest
Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, That Used to Be Us
Christopher Hitchens, Arguably
Advantage
Book’s Subtitle
Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World
How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back
Essays
Yergin
Number of Pulitzer Prizes
One
Three (all Friedman’s)
None
Friedman and Mandelbaum
Academic Credentials
Yale and Cambridge University
Friedman: Brandeis and Oxford; Mandelbaum: Yale, Harvard, and Cambridge
Oxford
Friedman and Mandelbaum
Number of Pages
816
400
816
Yergin and Hitchens (tie)
Weight
2.9 pounds
1.3 pounds
2.5 pounds
Yergin
Number of Cover Blurbs
Seven
None
Six
Yergin
Sample Review
“This masterful and illuminating book on one of the most vital issues of our time…should be essential reading for policymakers everywhere.” —Henry Kissinger
“Friedman and Mandelbaum are men of the American elite, and they write to salute those members of the American elite who behave public-spiritedly and to scourge those who do not.” —David Frum
“If Hitchens didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be able to invent him.” —Ian McEwan “Hitchens is the greatest living essayist in the English language.” —Christopher Buckley
Hitchens
Book’s Epigraph
None
“It makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us, and Singapore having better airports than us. And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth—that used to be us.” —Barack Obama
“Live all you can: It’s a mistake not to.” —Lambert Strether in Henry James’s The Ambassadors
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Tom Friedman, You’re a Lightweight!
Three top Washington thinkers have new books, all much more readable than their physical weight and subject matter suggest. Daniel Yergin engagingly weaves together the economy and the war on terror in a way few historians have done. Thomas L. Friedman, with Michael Mandelbaum, argues that the US is failing to confront the challenges of globalization. Christopher Hitchens returns with about 100 of his best recent essays. Here’s a comparison of these intellectual heavyweights.
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