Human Events, the conservative rag, has published its 2006 summer reading list. I doubt I will get to Ann Coulter’s book, but Islamic Imperialism looks good. Here’s their blurb on it:
To many liberals, the upsurge of Islamic jihad around the world is a response to America’s arrogant foreign policy.
But, as Professor Efraim Karsh demonstrates conclusively in "Islamic Imperialism: A History," the dream of a global Islamic empire has inspired every Muslim jihadist from Muhammad himself ("I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.’") to the 12th Century conqueror Saladin ("I shall cross the sea to their islands to pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah.") to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ("We will export our revolution throughout the world … until the calls ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah’ are echoed all over the world.") to Osama bin Laden ("I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah and his prophet Muhammad.").
September 11, Karsh demonstrates, must be seen as simply the latest expression of this dream, and such attacks have little to do with U.S. international behavior or policy in the Middle East.
Also looking interesting are
- Getting America Right: The True Conservative Values Our Nation Needs Today – true conservatism, as compared to what we see today in the Bush administration
- America: The Last Best Hope (Volume I) – Bill Bennet gives us a history of the U.S. to WWI. "Unlike modern-day leftist-influenced histories that treat the American story largely as a series of missteps and injustices, this book is filled with the glory, romance and uniqueness of the American experience."
- Earthly Powers – How secularism has always led inexorably to the establishment of totalitarian political religions (sounds right up my alley)
- What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions, Their Answers – "They built the country, they wrote the user’s manuals — Declaration, Constitution, Federalist Papers — and then ran it while it could still be returned to the manufacturer. We assume that if anyone knows how the U.S.A. should work, it must be them. In that spirit, we ask WWFD — What Would the Founders Do?"