Backward and upward : the new conservative writing / edited and with an introduction by David Brooks.

"A Vintage original"--T.p. verso.

Knock Me Out with a Truck / Danielle Crittenden -- My Wife as Attorney General / Mark Helprin -- Sexual Politics, the Real Thing / Lisa Schiffren -- America's New Man / Andrew Ferguson -- Sister Soldiers / Christina Hoff Sommers -- A Darkness in Massachusetts / Dorothy Rabinowitz -- The Week of Smoking Dangerously / Joe Queenan -- The Wonders of Washington: A Memoir / John Podhoretz -- The L Word: Love as Taboo / Kay S. Hymowitz -- Dorothy Parker, Uncompassionate Liberal / Florence King -- A Philosophy of Pleasure / Roger Scruton -- The Rise of Politics and the Decline of Black Culture / Tom Bethell -- Tumbleweed Dreams / Dave Shiflett -- The Use and Abuse of Violence / James Bowman -- Me and My Cars / Fred Barnes -- The Clever Life / Richard Brookhiser -- Tough Guys Don't Dance / Christopher Buckley -- Dialogues with the Dead / Christopher Clausen -- You'd Cry Too If It Happened to You / Peggy Noonan -- A Man, His Dog, and a Sad Story of Betrayal / Dave Shiflett --

Two Good Schools Are Not All We're Losing / Paul A. Gigot -- Quantity Time / Fred Barnes -- The Legacy of Russell Kirk / David Frum -- Remembering Allan Bloom / Clifford Orwin -- Time to Shake Our Hypochondria / Robert L. Bartley -- America's Best Infrastructure Program / George Gilder -- The Liberty Manifesto / P. J. O'Rourke -- George Will's Baseball - A Conservative Critique / Donald Kagan -- Cracking that Post-Soviet Market / David Brooks -- I Dodged the Draft, and I Was Wrong / Mark Helprin -- A New Approach to Welfare Reform: Humility / James Q. Wilson -- A Nation of Cowards / Jeffrey R. Snyder -- The Coming White Underclass / Charles Murray -- The Moral Origins of the Urban Crisis / William Bennett -- A Soldier of the Not Great War / Mark Helprin -- Those Who Don't Get It / Andrew Ferguson -- A Conservative Looks at Liberalism / William Kristol -- Brickbats and Broomsticks / P. J. O'Rourke -- The Greatest Cold War Myth of All / Charles Krauthammer --

Voice of America: Why Liberals Fear Me / Rush Limbaugh -- The Revolution of 1994 / John H. Fund.

The side that is winning the culture wars is the side that is having the most fun. And this lively and elegant anthology strongly suggests that conservatives are having a ball - and that they're terrific writers besides. The pieces collected here show that conservatism is as much about personality as it is about ideology. The wit, acuity, and sheer delight these writers take in slaughtering sacred cows make this collection so appealing that even liberals may find it irresistible.

Among the selections: Mark Helprin, admitting (to a class of West Point graduates) that what he did during the war in Vietnam was draft-dodging and wrong; Danielle Crittenden, with a manifesto for unnatural (or, at least, drug-assisted) childbirth; Andrew Ferguson, lampooning the movement to create sensitive men; Joe Queenan, intrepidly pushing the envelope of New York City's anti-smoking laws; and Florence King, on the elitist art of insulting.

All this plus contributions by George Gilder, Charles Murray, James Q. Wilson, Rush Limbaugh, Peggy Noonan, Robert Bartley, William Kristol, and many, many more.