The Flight of the Intellectuals
by Paul Berman
Melville House, 299 pp., $26.00
Nomad: From Islam to America
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Free Press, 277 pp., $27.00
Terror and Liberalism
by Paul Berman
Norton, 220 pp., $13.95 (paper)
Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents
by Ian Buruma
Princeton University Press, 132 pp., $19.95
Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name
by Timothy Garton Ash
Yale University Press, 464 pp., $35.00 (to be published in September)
Paul Berman’s The Flight of the Intellectuals elaborates on the theme of an embattled liberal civilization facing a totalitarian or fascist onslaught. The book points an accusing finger at two particular writers—Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton-Ash—whom Berman regards as exemplifying liberal intellectual pusillanimity. Berman, however, is not to be bothered by inconvenient truths that might arrest the flow of his rhetoric. His vision is crassly ideological: facts that might interfere with his argument are liable to be discarded or ignored.
