Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy (Princeton, 2016) is the exception to the rule that “you can’t tell a book by its cover.” Brennan’s cover depicts a ballot box with a big X over it, and that’s essentially what Brennan argues: Democracy today is government by the ignorant. And yet, Brennan’s last chapter, “Civic Enemies,” suggests the real problem is not democracy but government power. He appreciates the freedom to buy “wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas at Pizzeria Orso” rather than “yucky” Pizza Hut pizzas. If we had to choose one pizza-maker for everyone, though, probably everyone would have to eat Pizza Hut—so, the fewer winner-take-all choices the electorate has to make, the better.

Ilya Somin’s Democracy and Political Ignorance (Stanford, second edition 2016) makes similar points, but goes deeper by giving the reasons “why smaller government is smarter.” Somin shows that most citizens are ignorant but says political ignorance is rational behavior for most citizens, since the chance of only one vote affecting an election outcome is slight: It makes more sense for individuals to invest time in what they can control, such as what kind of car to buy. Somin rightly proposes placing “more decisions under the control of the market, civil society, and decentralized political institutions.”

Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman’s Dictators and Democrats: Masses, Elites and Regime Change (Princeton, 2016) says countries need strong civil society institutions to avoid falling into tyranny—but much of the writing is turgid. Elizabeth Hinton’s From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime (Harvard, 2016) brings together two Goliath programs often assessed in isolation and shows how the Johnson administration offered mixed messages a half-century ago.

Tyler Cowen, a George Mason University professor who runs an insightful website titled Marginal Revolution, sprinkles perceptive comments through his just-published The Complacent Class (St. Martin’s, 2017). Both rich and poor are complacent: Poor people who switch neighborhoods or cities usually improve their economic situation, but few want to move. Social justice advocates tend to disparage bankers and financiers, but Samuel Gregg’s For God and Profit (Crossroad, 2016) shows how they can serve the common good.

David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (HarperCollins, 2015) often connects dots in ways that go beyond the evidence. Cop Under Fire (Worthy, March 2017) by Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke has vigorous writing and chapter titles that don’t pull punches: “I’m colorblind when it comes to crime and punishment … American education embraces and enforces poverty … how lies turned isolated deaths into national scandals … black lives matter less to BLM than lies and leftist politics … the second amendment isn’t just for white people anymore.”

BOOKMARKS

If you have a coffee table and dollars to decorate it, Jerusalem: 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven, edited by Barbara Boehm and Melanie Holcomb (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), is beautiful, and Joseph Koerner’s Bosch & Bruegel (Princeton, 2016) brings out parallels in paintings that seem so different.

I mentioned last year the death of Kenneth Bailey and praised his books on understanding the Middle Eastern background of the Bible. I’ve just reread his book from 2005, The Cross & the Prodigal: Luke 15 Through the Eyes of Middle Eastern Peasants (IVP), and want to recommend it to anyone who’s teaching about the prodigal son parable.

Derek Cooper’s Introduction to World Christian History (IVP, 2016) has good information on Christianity’s advance under fire throughout the world. Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option (Sentinel, 2017) assumes Christian regress in the Western world and says conservative Christian political activists are “as ineffective as White Russian exiles, drinking tea from samovars in their Paris drawing rooms. … One wishes them well but knows deep down that they are not the future.” Dreher says a thousand-year flood is coming and “the best way to fight the flood is to … stop fighting the flood.” Stop piling up sandbags. Build an ark. —M.O.