Let's put it this way: Boot and Schwartz are journalists, Cohen is a scholar and policy analyst who also writes for a general public. Lawrence Freedman, who's reviewing the Cohen book for the next FA, is of comparable stature over in England.
As for the FA connection, Cohen is the regular reviewer for military books there, but writers of review essays for the mag are encouraged to speak their minds about the books under review, and I gather there's a conscious attempt to avoid predictable blowjobs and hatchet jobs. I doubt Freedman has ever even met Cohen, for example, although he certainly knows his work.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call the Schwartz review diplomatic, as he essentially accused both authors of dishonest politicized hackery in one of the country's most widely read intellectual venues. but yes, it was certainly not as gratuitously vicious as, say, the attacks Lawrence Kaplan has launched in the New Republic, or the stuff that pundits do on a regular basis...
tb@arbiter.com |
