Joseph Stieb (Author of The Regime Change Consensus)

Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing Moonglow by Michael Chabon	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I quite like Chabon. He's a vivid, engaging, funny writer who always seems to do something clever with his books. This isn't as good as Kavalier and Klay, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. ...more
Nov 20, 2025 02:02PM · like · see review
Joseph Stieb and 33 other people liked Abraham Arslan's review of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America: "A textbook case of intellectual dishonesty. MacLean has distorted arguments of J. Buchanan and Tyler Cowen. The mediocrity, carelessness and outright lies of MacLean has few parallels in Left. The oversimplification, distortion, and misrepresentation" Read more of this review »
Nov 18, 2025 07:28AM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb and 37 other people liked Ryan Hazen's review of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America: "A general rule of thumb when dealing with political literature is that if the title contains words like evil, radical, destruction, stealth, or other emotionally charged language... than chances are you're reading clickbait that looks to make money b" Read more of this review »
Nov 18, 2025 07:28AM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb made a comment on his review of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire " This is great! Much appreciated Richard. "
Nov 18, 2025 07:28AM · see review
Joseph Stieb rated a book did not like it Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a textbook case of how not to write history. While I learned a bit about the origins of American libertarianism, including the figure of James Buchanan, this book suffers from systematic problems. First, it is openly activist history, and it' ...more
Nov 15, 2025 08:07AM · 6 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb voted for We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution as Readers' Favorite History & Biography in the Opening Round of the 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards. Cast Your Vote
Nov 13, 2025 02:58PM · 1 like · like
Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
A tremendous and well-argued study of the core dynamics of the end of World War II. RF uses a wide variety of sources to assess what US and Japanese leaders knew, perceived, believed, and planned for in the last year of the war. He focuses like a las ...more
Nov 13, 2025 09:55AM · 6 likes · like · see review
Joseph Stieb rated a book really liked it The Global Age: Europe, 1950-2017 by Ian Kershaw	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is good for getting a comprehensive grasp on major political, cultural, and economic trends in Europe since the 1950s. However, it isn't as compelling as Kershaw's more specific and archive-based research on the Nazis and World War II. I also fo ...more
Nov 09, 2025 02:34PM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Global Age by Ian Kershaw. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Global Age by Ian Kershaw <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb rated a book really liked it A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts by Robert Bolt	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Quite enjoyed this; takes very little time to read, and it's a striking defense of individual conscience and the importance of law. Has some very clever, quasi-Shakespearean devices. However, it probably pops more on stage. ...more
Nov 06, 2025 09:15AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing Beyond Black Hawk Down: Intervention, Nation-Building, and Insurgency in Somalia, 1992-1995 by Jonathan Carroll	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I'm reviewing this formally for a different publication, but I'll say real quick that this is an excellent account of an important post-Cold War exercise in humanitarian intervention and nation building which corrected many of my misunderstandings of ...more
Nov 03, 2025 07:43AM · 2 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Beyond Black Hawk Down by Jonathan Carroll. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Beyond Black Hawk Down by Jonathan Carroll <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

I quite like Chabon. He's a vivid, engaging, funny writer who always seems to do something clever with his books. This isn't as good as Kavalier and Klay, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. ...more

Joseph Stieb and 33 other people liked Abraham Arslan's review of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America:

"A textbook case of intellectual dishonesty. MacLean has distorted arguments of J. Buchanan and Tyler Cowen. The mediocrity, carelessness and outright lies of MacLean has few parallels in Left. The oversimplification, distortion, and misrepresentation" Read more of this review »

Joseph Stieb and 37 other people liked Ryan Hazen's review of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America:

"A general rule of thumb when dealing with political literature is that if the title contains words like evil, radical, destruction, stealth, or other emotionally charged language... than chances are you're reading clickbait that looks to make money b" Read more of this review »

Joseph Stieb made a comment on his review of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire

" This is great! Much appreciated Richard. "

Joseph Stieb rated a book did not like it

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America
by Nancy MacLean

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

This is a textbook case of how not to write history. While I learned a bit about the origins of American libertarianism, including the figure of James Buchanan, this book suffers from systematic problems. First, it is openly activist history, and it' This is a textbook case of how not to write history. While I learned a bit about the origins of American libertarianism, including the figure of James Buchanan, this book suffers from systematic problems. First, it is openly activist history, and it's clear that the quality of the historical argumentation is undermined by the desire to discredit libertarianism and the GOP. Now I'm not a libertarian, and not a Republican, and there's nothing wrong inherently with writing a book with a political purpose in mind. But in this case the political purpose overwhelms and distorts the handling of evidence, creating a book that it virtually useless to historians.

I'll highlight 3 problems with the book. First is the argument that libertarianism is some stealth plan to radically change American society and undo democracy in order to protect, at all costs, the sanctity of private property. I do agree that the Kochs, Rothbards, and Buchanans of the world are cold, dangerous ideologues whose ideas and influence is harmful to our society. But the idea that they are a "Fifth Column," as NM puts it, is silly and unsubstantiated. Like almost any political movement, libertarians work to gain influence in academia, business, politics, etc through normal and legal channels/methods. They may downplay the more radical implications of their beliefs at some points, but besides being extremely well-funded, libertarians are like any other ideological interest group. NM's purpose is to delegitimize them, not to explain them historically,

Also, as a historian, this book drove me nuts with its sloppy approach to intellectual history. NM asserts that Buchanan and JJ Kilpatrick are the intellectual heirs (indeed, part of the same movement) to John C. Calhoun, especially Calhoun's idea that democracy should be restricted if it violates property rights (which wasn't Calhoun's main argument anyways; his was the concurrent majority, which is a form of minority rule, but whatever). But NM just jumps 100 years from Calhoun to Buchanan, ignoring vast historical changes, to say they are part of a continuous conspiracy. It's the kind of really bad "history" that you see from right-wing figures like Dinesh D'Souza, where he argues that modern progressives are part of the same conspiracy to destroy freedom as Lenin and Stalin.

And finally, this book is extremely haphazard in showing the influence of its main characters, the Virginia School economists. There's a whole chapter on Chile (which, btw, is one of the wealthiest societies in Latin America despite progressives' treating it like a neoliberal hellscape) that shows little more than sporadic contact between Pinochet's folks and the Virginia School people. Buchanan's biggest idea was public choice theory, which cynically applied rational cost-benefit analysis to the interests of public sector employees as rent-seekers, and that has clearly been part of the right-wing critique of the public sector for decades. But Buchanan himself doesn't seem to be anywhere near as important as Milton Friedman or Hayek, and he never held any real positions of power. So the reader is left with a wishy-washy sense of why these Virginia school guys mattered at all.

One last comment: it's extra galling that MacLean would criticize economics departments and think-tank-ish academic centers at places like George Mason for being vectors of political influence or of having political/ideological goals as their main raisons d'etre. Academia has dozens of departments and programs (mostly under the 'studies' headings) that are explicitly political in their origins and aims. Gender, ethnic, queer, comparative, etc studies are not disciplines but lenses that all but guarantee certain outcomes in the scholarship they produce. Despite being under rather than overfunded, they aren't all that different from the libertarian/neoliberal academic institutions that NM so clearly despises. So a lot of academia doesn't have a leg to stand on.

It's not surprising that this book came, made a splash and raised controversy, and then all but disappeared. I don't know any historians of conservatism (and I am one, to some extent) who see it as a significant contribution. I recommend reading Jane Mayer's history of the Koch brothers and works by Quinn SLobodian, but not this. ...more

Joseph Stieb voted for We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution as Readers' Favorite History & Biography in the Opening Round of the 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards.

Cast Your Vote

Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing

Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
by Richard B. Frank

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

A tremendous and well-argued study of the core dynamics of the end of World War II. RF uses a wide variety of sources to assess what US and Japanese leaders knew, perceived, believed, and planned for in the last year of the war. He focuses like a las A tremendous and well-argued study of the core dynamics of the end of World War II. RF uses a wide variety of sources to assess what US and Japanese leaders knew, perceived, believed, and planned for in the last year of the war. He focuses like a laser on these questions; if you want to read about Okinawa and Iwo Jima you'll have to go elsewhere.

Frank convincingly demonstrates several key points in this book. First, there was no evidence the Japanese leadership (an inner council made up of largely military figures) was ready to surrender in the short or medium term in the summer of 1945, before both the atomic bombings and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. Instead, teh Japanese leadership was planning for Ketsu-Go, or a stalwart defense of the southernmost home island of Kyushu. They heavily reinforced this island in order to make it into a giant version of Okinawa: an absolute meat-grinder that would erode US willpower and compel the US to negotiate an end to he war that would prevent an occupation, keep the military clique in power, and let Japan self-disarm (among other concessions).

This was the position of the majority of the Japanese leadership, including the Emperor, until August. There were cracks in this facade, especially some of the civilian leadership who were growing increasingly concerned that the . Some Japanese diplomats made overtures to the SOviet Union and other states to broker a deal that would be something less than unconditional surrender. But these were little more than feelers, and Prime Minister Suzuki explicitly rejected making an offer of unconditional surrender with an exemption for the imperialist institution. Many revisionist historians have argued that this was the deal the US could have reached without having to use the bomb, but by using Magic intelligence intercepts from the time itself, Frank shows this was not the case.

Frank also examines US planning for the invasion of Kyushu and eventually Honshu (Operations Olympic and Coronet) while also covering the strategic bombing campaign and the blockade. He shows that while the United States was rapidly crushing the Japanese economy and killing hundreds of thousands of people in air raids. The US movement toward Operation Olympic was stymied through Magic intercepts in June 1945 that dramatically revised upward the number of Japanese soldiers on Kyushu (nearly a 1-1 ratio with US invading forces) and the likelihood of immense US casualties.

One has to remember that Japan was the secondary theater in WWII. The US people supported unconditional surrender, but they were also growing war-weary, and the US military was heading into a partial demobilization. It did not have unlimited resources to throw at Japan, nor did it have unlimited time. So the combination of these factors made the US leadership become much more skittish about a full-on invasion, which only added to the logic of the bombs. Moreover, US intelligence could see that while Japan had been devastated, it still retained enormous military capacity.

Frank also goes in depth on the Japanese leadership's factions and deliberations to show that the atomic bombings were in fact decisive in prompting them to surrender, and that both bombings were needed (Nagasaki reinforced the point that the US would keep dropping bombs until Japan gave in). The Japanese Supreme Council was internally divided, with some military leaders advocating further resistance through Ketsu-Go and others advocating surrender. The US Secretary of State made an offer of unconditional surrender with a vague promise of maintaining the imperial institution, which left the door open to Japan giving up. Ultimately, the Emperor made his intentions known to the Cabinet that he wanted to take this offer (until then he had been a de facto hardliner). This was decisive in getting the militarists to give in (although not without some coup plotting!), and the Emperor's public message of surrender critically helped get all the far-flung forces of the Japanese Imperial military to give up as well, obviating the possibility of holdout insurgencies across the Pacific.

Frank understands that there are no easy answer in the atomic bomb debate. The urge of the revisionists to reconsider the bombing is understandable, but they stretch the evidence about why the bomb was dropped and why it was probably necessary to do so to end the war, at least in the short term. The evidence from the time period that the bombing was about intimidating Russia is thin; that's largely reading the Cold War back into WWII. The truths about the A-bombs are that A. they were less a decision, thoroughly debated by Truman's Cabinet, and more the end point of a strategy of total pressure against Japan and B. They were dropped for the reason US leaders said they were dropped: to end the war as fast and decisively as possible and C. They actually had that effect, although not in isolation from Soviet intervention, blockade, strategic bombing, etc.

The moral truth of the atomic bombings is that they were a means that justified the ends, especially in hindsight. Unconditional surrender was the correct policy, and it enabled the US to root out Japanese militarism and put the . There was not going to be a clean end to this war; hundreds of thousands were going to suffer whether the war ended through blockade, domestic uprising, continued strategic bombing, invasion, etc, or some combination of these things. Frank notes that every day the war went on, thousands of innocent people (including US POWs) in the Japanese empire were dying. Furthermore, the US still had not thoroughly bombed the railway system in Japan; that was their next step for late 1946, and it would have caused a terrible famine in Japan.

In short, this book strengthened my impression that there was no real alternative, no clever way out of this war, besides the dropping of the atomic bombs, however horrific these acts were. The book is also a shocking testament to the horrors of total war between modern industrial powers. ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book really liked it

The Global Age: Europe, 1950-2017
by Ian Kershaw

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

This is good for getting a comprehensive grasp on major political, cultural, and economic trends in Europe since the 1950s. However, it isn't as compelling as Kershaw's more specific and archive-based research on the Nazis and World War II. I also fo ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book really liked it

A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
by Robert Bolt

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Quite enjoyed this; takes very little time to read, and it's a striking defense of individual conscience and the importance of law. Has some very clever, quasi-Shakespearean devices. However, it probably pops more on stage. ...more

Joseph Stieb rated a book it was amazing

Beyond Black Hawk Down by Jonathan Carroll

Beyond Black Hawk Down: Intervention, Nation-Building, and Insurgency in Somalia, 1992-1995
by Jonathan Carroll

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

I'm reviewing this formally for a different publication, but I'll say real quick that this is an excellent account of an important post-Cold War exercise in humanitarian intervention and nation building which corrected many of my misunderstandings of ...more

Joseph’s Year In Books

Joseph Stieb’s Followers (238)

Joseph’s Bookshelves

Joseph’s Friends (252)

2025 Reading Challenge

Joseph Stieb

Goodreads Author

Combine Editions
Joseph Stieb’s books

rss
Joseph’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean

See a Problem?

Preview — Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean

See a Problem?

Preview — Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean

See a Problem?

Preview — The Global Age by Ian Kershaw

See a Problem?

Preview — A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

See a Problem?

Preview — Beyond Black Hawk Down by Jonathan Carroll

Joseph’s Quotes

Joseph’s Friend Comments

Joseph’s Year In Books

Joseph Stieb’s Followers (238)

Joseph’s Bookshelves

Joseph’s Friends (252)

2025 Reading Challenge

Joseph Stieb

Goodreads Author

Combine EditionsJoseph Stieb’s books

rssJoseph’s Recent Updates

See a Problem?

Preview — Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean

See a Problem?

Preview — Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean

See a Problem?

Preview — Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean

See a Problem?

Preview — The Global Age by Ian Kershaw

See a Problem?

Preview — A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

See a Problem?

Preview — Beyond Black Hawk Down by Jonathan Carroll

Joseph’s Quotes

Joseph’s Friend Comments

Combine Editions
Joseph Stieb’s books

rss
Joseph’s Recent Updates