Free Republic

Hunter Biden is a drug-addled degenerate who probably is not competitively employable. Despite those handicaps, he and his uncle Jim Biden cut a wide swath, making or trying to make major deals with giant Chinese companies that presumably are arms of the Chinese Communist Party. What did Jim and Hunter Biden bring to the table in negotiating these deals? Obviously, it was the political influence of Joe Biden, at the time the outgoing Vice President and long-time Washington insider. As I have said many times, no one ever bribed Hunter Biden. The only point of the Biden family business was...

I'm a voracious reader of Covid books but nothing could have prepared me for Scott Atlas’s A Plague Upon Our House, a full and mind-blowing account of the famed scientist’s personal experience with the Covid era and a luridly detailed account of his time at the White House. The book is hot fire, from page one to the last, and will permanently affect your view of not only this pandemic and the policy response but also the workings of public health in general. Atlas’s book has exposed a scandal for the ages. It is enormously valuable because it fully blows...

If you’ve been paying attention, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been getting major airtime from all of the television networks to promote his new book Republican Revival, his vision of how he will save the Republican party. He’s getting the airtime, but he’s not moving any books. According to Amazon, his book hasn’t even cracked the top 50 best sellers list. That’s because the entire book is nothing more than one huge ax-grinding session by Christie. What Christie hasn’t realized for himself yet is that most Republicans, especially those in his home state of New Jersey are done...

Scottie Pippen put forth his version of "The Last Dance." Pippen, who recently released a book called "Unguarded," went after former teammate and NBA icon Michael Jordan, saying that he "ruined the game of basketball" in an excerpt from the book, which was shared by Hypebeast. "I may go as far to say Mike ruined basketball," Pippen said. "In the 80s on the playgrounds, you’d have everyone moving the ball around — passing to help the team. That stopped in the 90s. Kids wanted to be ‘Like Mike.’ Well, Mike didn’t want to pass — didn’t want to rebound, or...

What if Donald Trump has to fight a grudge match against Liz Cheney and Chris Christie on his way to a second term? This scenario is probably more likely than you might think—one with significant consequences. Both Cheney and Christie are tough pugilists, and both are in the news flirting with a presidential run. In a sense, they are already running against him. This past week, Cheney traveled to Manchester, New Hampshire, and delivered a “standing ovation” speech that was interpreted by CNN as “testing the waters” for a presidential bid. During the speech, she staked out conservative ground criticizing...

When we think about American GIs in the European theater of World War II, much of our image comes from the Battle of the Bulge. Named so because of the distinctive "bulge" shape of the front lines, this is where so many American men laid down their lives on fields of frozen mud in France. What Was the Battle of the Bulge? The Battle of the Bulge was the result of Hitler's last dying gasp lashing out against the increasing pressure of the Allied forces in France. Hitler's goal was to drive a literal and metaphorical wedge between the United...

Don’t be surprised to witness more verbal fireworks between former President Donald Trump and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie with the publication this week of Christie’s new book, "Republican Rescue." The book’s subtitle, "Saving the party from truth deniers, conspiracy theorists, and the dangerous polices of Joe Biden," is a direct shot at the former president, who on a daily basis continues to re-litigate his 2020 election loss to now-President Biden as he repeatedly flirts with another White House run in 2024. And it appears to be a major effort by Christie to spell out his vision for the...

In pockets of the country, state education officials and local school boards are responding to complaints from some parents by removing books from schools and conducting widespread audits of school libraries, to weed out texts deemed inappropriate for students. But these efforts have sparked blowback from authors and advocacy groups, who say the removals -- which tend to target texts on culturally sensitive topics -- risk depriving certain students from reading books that reflect their own lives and enhance their cultural literacy. In northern Virginia, a state whose candidates for governor sparred this fall over critical race theory, a county...

When news hit that former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain died of COVID-19 a month after he attended then-President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa last summer, many of the president's campaign staffers blamed themselves for his death, according to a new book. "We killed Herman Cain," one senior Trump staffer reportedly told ABC News reporter Will Steakin, who also attended the Tulsa event on June 20, 2020. That's according to an excerpt of ABC News' chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl's forthcoming book, "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show," published in Vanity Fair on Thursday. The book is slated...

NEW YORK — Lauren Groff’s novel “Matrix,” the story of a 12th century royal outcast who combats the rule of men and other hierarchies, is among the finalists for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for fiction. “Four Hundred Souls,” a “Community History of African America” co-authored by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, is a nonfiction nominee. Winners, each of whom receive $5,000, will be announced Jan. 23. The prizes are presented by the American Library Association, which helped found the honors in 2012. Previous winners include James McBride’s “Deacon King Kong,” Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch” and Adam Higginbotham’s “Midnight...

To tell the tale of Louis L'Amour is to tell the tale of a bygone America, one where freedom was much easier to come by, though just as dangerous to defend. L'Amour documented the world of frontier liberty, with all its perks and pitfalls, in an extensive manner that no one else can boast, penning over 100 Western novels. While his books were fiction, L'Amour knew the cowboy life second hand, growing up at a time when remnants of the Old West frontier were still very much alive in pockets of the country.

There were about half a dozen prisoner of war camps in Tennessee during World War II — the best known of which was Camp Crossville, in Cumberland County. We know a lot more about Camp Crossville than the others because of Gerhard Hennes. Hennes was a German officer captured in North Africa in May 1943. Five months later, he entered the gates of Camp Crossville, where he was interred for two years. After World War II, Hennes would become an American citizen, and in 2004 he published The Barbed Wire: POW in the USA. In it he gives a detailed...

Ross Douthat has a powerful new book about his battle with chronic Lyme disease. In "The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery," he writes beautifully, with honesty and gratitude. I was overcome with emotion when I got to the part about our mutual friend Andrew Walther, who died a year ago. Douthat describes Andrew as "a Knight of Columbus and energetic global diplomat who was saving Middle Eastern Christians from the Islamic State while I was wandering around our rural property and dosing myself with tetracycline and tweeting against Trump. He and his wife had their fourth child...

Hi. Can anyone recommend some good Christian authors and novels? Or even if not overtly Christian, just clean and well-written novels written by intelligent people? I really don't enjoy the romance-type books where everything wraps up perfectly at the end. I'm looking for realistic stories. Thank you in advance.

Once upon a time it was simple. Children went to sleep on a diet of bedtime stories that grew out of folklore, depended on magic or were just enchantingly simple: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Goodnight Moon. Not anymore, because these days bedtime is all about getting woke. Take a glance at the shelves of the children's department of any major bookstore. Teach Your Dragon About Diversity, sits next to 'Daddy & Dada'. Glance a few books along and you'll find, Joey, not a heartwarming tale about a baby kangaroo, but an illustrated hagiography of Joe Biden written by,...

Classic children’s books in a Cambridge University archive will in future be labelled with ‘trigger warnings’ for ‘harmful content relating to slavery, colonialism and racism’. Researchers are reviewing more than 10,000 books and magazines to expose authors who have been ‘offensive to historically enslaved, colonised or denigrated people’. It comes after anti-racist campaigners demanded teachers censor racial slurs when reading out the text of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. The archive at Cambridge’s Homerton College is being reviewed as part of a move to upload texts to a digital library. In online versions, words, phrases and images deemed harmful...

She's gripped Spain with her ultra-violent crime thrillers and was regarded by critics as the country's answer to Italy's reclusive novelist Elena Ferrante. But now Carmen Mola has revealed her most stunning plot twist: she doesn't exist, and her books are penned by three middle-aged men. On Friday night the €1million Planeta prize was awarded to Mola, an author who until now had been presented as a female university professor writing under a pen name so she could remain anonymous. But when the main prize at the ceremony was announced in the presence of King Felipe VI in Barcelona, three...

Source: Jonathan FeldsteinI’ve read many great books, but it’s rare that I have the urge to thank the author. In the case of “Hidden Heroes,” I wanted to do so on two levels: to thank Pam Cohen for her outstanding recounting of details of the struggle to free Soviet Jews, and for her incredible role in making so much of the outcome about which she’s recounted possible to begin with. One of the beautiful things about “Hidden Heroes” is that while recounting her experiences, Pam interweaves stories of the lives of many of the refuseniks on whose behalf she advocated....

Irish author Sally Rooney is at the centre of a controversy after refusing to allow her new book to be translated into Hebrew by an Israeli company. The acclaimed writer said it was in support of calls to boycott Israel over its policies towards the Palestinians. She said it would "be an honour" to have Beautiful World, Where Are You translated into Hebrew by a company which shared her political position. A senior Israeli minister said such boycotts were a form of anti-Semitism.

Stephanie Grisham, White House press secretary to first lady Melania Trump, is out with a book that paints a deeply unflattering picture of Donald Trump — a man with a “terrifying” temper who ogled a young aide and tried to impress dictators while president, she writes. Grisham describes Melania as a Marie Antoinette figure who refused to condemn the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as Trump's supporters stormed the building to halt certification of 2020 election results. Grisham writes she texted Melania Trump as the scene unfolded. “Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the...