Chris Suellentrop

Review of An Army of Davids in the New York Observer

The New York Observer has published my review of "the Instapundit book," Glenn Reynolds's An Army of Davids.

Shorter Observer review: "It may be fun to pretend that you’re a rugged online individual fighting The Man of big institutions that keep putting you down. But Instapundit himself draws a paycheck from an institution of a kind that’s been around since the Middle Ages: the university (and his is funded by the state). There are exceptions, but the vast bulk of successful news-and-politics bloggers seem to be tenured professors or prominent journalists. Who are the Davids here?"

Recycled Observer reviews [$]: Steven Brill's After; Will Hutton's A Declaration of Independence; Walter Shapiro's One-Car Caravan; David A. Vise and Mark Malseed's The Google Story.

My bloggingheads.tv debut

Robert Wright, the author of Nonzero and The Moral Animl aand the man behind both meaningoflife.tv and bloggingheads.tv, invited me to join the bloggingheads revolution that's sweeping the nation. He and I recorded a video dialogue--"diavlog" is the somewhat awkward neologism--on Friday that covers everything from polygamy, female Democratic candidates, the "to hell with them" hawks, and the NCAA tournament (including a mention of George Mason as a libertarian triumph). Click here to watch the whole thing, or to pick segments by topic.

Review of Bruce Bartlett's Impostor in the Washington Post

The Washington Post has published my review of Bruce Bartlett's much-discussed Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy in today's Style section, and the editors, in their infinite wisdom, put it on Style's front page. (Bartlett is a guest columnist this month at TimesSelect, which makes him a guest colleague of The Opinionator.)

Shorter Impostor review: "Now, 9/11 didn't Change Everything, as some would have it, but it most certainly did Change Some Things, one of which was the relationship between Bush and his conservative base in the Republican Party. Nominated in large part because of his father's name, his establishment ties and his triangulating, tweak-the-Congress electability, Bush became a figure worthy of devotion, even adoration, among movement conservatives only after the terrorist attacks. No person writing about Bush's place in the conservative movement could ignore the crucible of Sept. 11.

"Yet Bruce Bartlett has done exactly that. ... To be fair, Bartlett acknowledges being 'deeply concerned' about the war in Iraq, but he says he sticks to economic policy 'because that is my field of expertise.' Fair enough, but the decision to restrict his areas of inquiry turns out to be unusually frustrating, because he hits upon a persuasive unified field theory of Bush failures but declines to pursue it."

Recycled Washington Post reviews: Edward Klein's The Truth About Hillary; Byron York's The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy; Dick Morris and Eileen McGann's Because He Could.

Wired essay on the "Global Gaming Crackdown"

The April issue of Wired is guest-edited by Will Wright, the creator of SimCity and The Sims, among other games. It includes a short essay from me on the various ways that governments are beginning to regulate "virtual worlds," the giant multiplayer spaces that we used to call massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. Most of the action has been in Asian countries such as China, South Korea, and Japan, but there has been some speculation about what it all means for the United States, where the main questions so far have to do with taxes, copyright, and speech.

Shorter Wired: "In the near future, the IRS could require game developers to keep records of all the transactions that take place in virtual economies and tax players on their gains before any game currency is converted into dollars. 'It's utterly implausible that it won't happen,' says Dan Hunter, who has coauthored law review articles like 'The Laws of the Virtual Worlds.' "

Recycled MMORPG content: "The Virtual World Gets Real," Wired, August 2005.

National Magazine Awards

Two magazines that I wrote for last year have each been nominated for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence. In the "Under 100,000 circulation" category, the late, lamented Legal Affairs was nominated for its January/February, March/April, and September/October issues. The September/October issue contained my profile of Solicitor General Paul Clement. In the "500,000 to 1,000,000 circulation" category, Wired was nominated for its July, November, and December issues. The December issue contained my feature on the fan-film series Star Trek New Voyages. (The next episode of New Voyages, by the way, will feature George "Sulu" Takei.)

General excellence "honors the effectiveness with which writing, reporting, editing and design all come together to command readers' attention and fulfill the magazine's unique editorial mission."