Rating: 
Summary: Thank You Harry
Review: This is simply the best book I have read in years. This book is a must read for all you liberals out there. Even if you don't agree with the author you will be enertained and enlightened on the mind set of conservatives. Its a GREAT read.
Rating: 
Summary: Metamorphosis from Liberal to Conservative
Review: This book is interesting when you see the change of the thinking of a died in the wool liberal of the 60's become a soft spoken conservative. He takes the reader through the years of his youth, college days and life living in France. His life was a free for all style, but leads you to believe he wasn't comfortable with it all.It was not until his marriage and children, did he understand that he wanted to be true to his wife. His views changed and wrote about his views about morality, the family and abortion. He riled up the feminist and the liberal news media when he wrote about his ideas. He drops names as if they are blast from a gun. The book is full of names of reporters, authors, news people, Hollywood and others in the circle of the press. This gets a little old, especially if you are not familiar with them. He does cover the Clinton years and his disappointment with his Presidency. I found this book a little difficult to read, no titled chapters and it seemed to ramble and jump around to many areas. It seems strange that you find more books by former 60's liberal who woke up one day or should we say grew up and became a conservative.
Rating:
Summary: Good
Review: It's interesting that the progression of political thought usually goes from liberal to conservative. You rarely run across someone who was an old conservative, and is now a new liberal. As the old joke goes, "If you're under 30 and a conservative, you have no heart. If you're over 30 and a liberal, you have no brain." Harry Stein managed to develop a brain. And Stein does a fabulous job of de-glamorizing the French view that we are just being puritannical in our judgement of Clinton. And Americans are so in awe of the French sensibility, that a lot of us let that cow us. But Stein lived in France for years, and he gives VERY good reasons for why we should not give a whit of credence to their moral attitudes. There is some overly right-wing sentiment in this book, that annoys less fanatical Republicans like me. But overall, I was truly grateful to come across the breath of fresh air that is this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Politcal Conversion in Progress
Review: Catchy title, but Mr. Stein, in the end, is more of a moderate Republican than a Right-wing Conspirator. His stories of feminist extremism and other conservative Points of view are similar to Rush Limbaugh's books of the early 90s. What's different is his political upbringing and conversion to right-of-center politics. As an ex-hippie and ex-member of the vast left-wing media, Mr. Stein shares telling examples of how journalism works. He describes the assumptions that liberal media types make when reporting a certain kind of story. These are the tales that he tells best, and why the book is worth the time. Stein's conversion may still in progress it would seem. He has harsh words for conservative stalwarts Trent Lott and Tom Delay, he is pro-choice with some reservations and he's more accepting of marginal behaviors than mid-American Republicans. I guess you would best describe him as a Compassionate Conservative that Found Inner Peace.
Rating: 
Summary: From one unthinking orthodoxy to another
Review: Stein will undoubtedly sell lots of books to other Angry White Guys who are tired of being negatively stereotyped and vilified by various minority constituencies looking for convenient scapegoats for historical wrongs. Stein apparently started out as a "liberal," but the book shows clearly that his erstwhile positions were pretty much the knee-jerk result of conditioning, rather than of his having studied philosophy, political history, and the comparative merits of various approaches to public policy. Consequently, when the personal and positional warts possessed by many people on the left become apparent to Stein, he flip flops and decides that the opposite views are actually the correct ones. The problem here is that once again he fails to do the necessary historical and philosophical homework that might have helped him to understand the actual basis and consequences of various political postures. The liberals are frequently shallow, shrill, unfair, and hypocritical, he reasons, so their enemies must actually be my friends. This is all too common a political trajectory for Angry White Guys, but it doesn't make it any less shallow and unthinking. Along the way, some of the anecdotes he offers are amusing enough, and involve repulsively alienating characters associated with various liberal causes with which most of us by now are all too familiar. The problem with the book and with Stein's "conversion," however, is that nowhere does he ever get to the heart of the matter when it comes to the actual historical bases for liberal vs. conservative views, personalities and irritating behaviors aside. Just because "liberal" positions can be abused, exaggerated, and used as platforms to unfairly bludgeon opponents does not mean that the positions themselves are not justified. Does Stein really believe in gutting environmental regulations, legalizing discrimination in the workplace, spending billions of dollars on unnecessary weapons systems, proping up right-wing dictatorships around the world, keeping women and minorities in their historically subordinate places, defending the purchase of armor-piercing bullets, and on and on? He probably doesn't even think in such terms; he just seems more emotionally comfortable listening to Rush Limbaugh blast "feminazis" and defend the misunderstood virtues of poor put-upon white breadwinners everywhere. Unfortunately, that's about as far as his "political analysis" goes in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Stein Pens Readable Story of His Journey Right
Review: Like the pictures you saw before the late 1980's of East Germans scaling the Berlin Wall to land in the West; like Cuban refugees who float on inner tubes to get away from that Island Prison, here comes Harry Stein, successfully navigating the one way road from liberal operative to conservative chronicler. You never saw people escaping into East Germany, and you'll never see people floating from the Keys on 20lbs of rubber to Havana. So it is that you'll never read a convincing tale of a conservative regressing into liberalism. Embracing at least some conservative virtues is a sign that you've grown up: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things" Welcome, Mr. Stein. We've been waiting for you.
Rating:
Summary: A convert who still preaches to the choir
Review: To Stein's credit, he has a richer sense of humor than that other lefty-turned-righty David Horowitz, and I prefer his worldview to that of Joe Queenan or P.J. O'Rourke. But while often humorous, the book's essentially one-note in its argument, and not always consistent at even that.
For example, it's disingenuous for Stein, the father of two teens, to lament the coarsening of pop culture (one subject where he actually might pick up support from the Left), while simultaneously regaling us with detailed accounts of his swinging '70s sex life (and mentioning a gay colleague's "blowjob-by-blowjob" description of his conquests). Bill Bennett and Michael Medved enjoy credibility in attacking vulgarity because they themselves don't engage in it. You can't have it both ways, Harry.
And his picture of modern feminism is one-dimensional. The feminists here aren't just wrong, they're obnoxiously wrong and repellently wrong. Makes you wonder how something as obviously despicable and emasculating as '70s feminism ever toppled so much of the inviolate American Way of Life, and so quickly. And it makes you monder if Stein's not simply projecting some of his own insecurities onto the entire feminist movement. Stein's also incredibly petty now and then -- he smirks over feminists mourning the death of racehorse Ruffian after a "Battle of the Sexes" matchup... in 1975. The motif of this book, over and over, is Stein beating upon equally dead horses.
Yes, the '60s generation has plenty to answer for. Absolutely, it's impossible to to honestly discuss race and gender in most public arenas nowadays. Of course, many of those who champion "tolerance" and "sensitivity" can be among the most intolerant and insensitive people on Earth. And it goes without saying that higher education and journalism have more than their share of loonies. Indeed, Harry Stein hits few wrong notes in this (often unintentionally) revealing memoir ... but that still doesn't make this book a symphony.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful, engaging, wry ,and too short;-)
Review: Mr. Stein humorously recounts his transformation from being a member of the vanguard of the proleteriat in the 1960's to a protector of traditional values by the late 1990's. Marriage and fatherhood have reoriented his views on feminism, multiculturalism, race, sex, abortion, entertainment and a host of other topics. This is all interlaced in a highly readable personal account of his journey from knee-jerk radical (his critics would emphasize the jerk) to his account of his 'outing' as a facsist (because of his views on childcare i.e., at home with mom). Beneath the humor lies some trenchant analysis of Newspeak media types (I scored 100% on his match the bloviating PC quote with the network anchor), and the general coarsening of contemporary America. Some of his most interesting observations concern the decline of the NY Times , the nations paper of record, from the paragon of journalistic integrity, objectivity , and style to a PC rag. The editorials have always been reflexively left but the news and features were straight reporting. I thought I was the only one who thought the Times' news and feature articles have taken on the gaseous cant of the Nation. There's another book here, Harry- The Decline and Fall of the NY Times - what a pity. I hope Harry makes a pile of money with this book because the PC commissars of the literary and entertainment industry won't forget this kind of right deviationism.
Rating:
Summary: The Conspiracy Grows More Vast By the Day
Review: What makes this title all the more amusing is that Harry Stein is far from a hardcore conservative. He is an admirer of John McCain and expresses doubts about Trent Lott and Tom DeLay (both of whose conservative credentials have also been somewhat debatable of late.) Despite mountains of evidence proving the contrary, he still holds to the myth of the Hollywood Blacklist, and although he is greatly troubled by rabid gay activists he rejects the notion that gays can change and conveniently never mentions the thousands of former homosexuals who would no doubt disagree with him. Why he considers himself part of the vast right wing conspiracy (and why no doubt the Clintons and their goose-stepping cheerleaders would agree) is that he believes strongly in integrity, personal responsibility, fidelity, honor, patriotism, and a host of other virtues guaranteed to earn the disdain of Clintonites. He also dares to criticize the leftist idols of day care, revisionism, feminism (which pretty much lost all hints of credibility under Clinton), and the miasma of lapsed standards felicitously symbolized by the current commander in chief. While Clintonism is a recurring theme, this is a far more encompassing autobiography detailing Stein's transformation from Communist sympathizer to a moderate American who leans conservative many times and liberal at others. Both his career in journalism and his previous involvement in radicalism give him a unique insider's view into much of the elitists' mindset. While any open-minded person sees "The New York Times" descent from liberal objectivity into a self-righteous, ideologically driven publication, the charge carries considerably more weight coming from Stein. Much of the supporting data he mentions cleverly showcases the extremism that the NYT now subtly (and sometimes brazenly) vaunts on its pages. Perhaps most striking--in a rather bemusing way--is Stein's evolution on the abortion debate. While bravely admitting that he and his wife have been party to 4 abortions (separately and together), his half-hearted changed mind seems strange. He speaks of "great respect" for the pro-life movement and many of those in it yet can never see himself fully embracing that position. He then goes on to speculate on the children he did not allow to live and wonder what kind of citizens they would have grown up to be. Somehow this section reads like the torment of a man who is understandably unable to face a painful reality. Stein devotes another stimulating portion to the ubiquitous anti-Americanism and divisive multiculturalism found in much of modern American education. In a chilling passage, he describes how the Communist organizations to which he once belonged had greater respect for the United States and its founding fathers than do the rebel rousing educrats who unctuously spew this diversity dribble. Throughout the book, this right wing conspirator employees smart wittiness, sardonic insights, and a healthy ability not to take himself too seriously.
Rating:
Summary: Chronicle of an Interesting Personal Journey
Review: I first read something by Harry Stein back in college, when a friend gave me a copy of Ethics and Other Liabilities, a collection of his early columns on the subject in Esquire Magazine. While for the most part I found it interesting and insightful, it did display a discomfiting tendency towards self-righteousness, and an underlying tone that was very "p.c." (although this being the early 1980's, that particular term hadn't been coined yet, much less beaten to death). Just One of the Guys, his memoir of a few years later about what it means to be male in America suffered from similiar weaknesses, as well as conveying the sense (very prevalent among baby-boomers I find) that simply 'fessing up to rotten behaviour in and of itself absolves one of it. So, it's very interesting to see where Stein is at now, lo these many years later. Basically, the book relates the story of how over the years Stein has "evolved" (or "devolved" depending on one's point of view) from young sixties Movement radical to middle-aged neoconservative. Needless to say, he's hardly breaking new ground here. However, for the most part Stein manages to avoid the crippling self-seriousness, anguished mea culpas, and grim score settling that has often dragged down other works which mine this particular vein (are you listening David Horowitz?). Though there is much in the book that is serious, Stein's primary intent is to entertain and amuse, at his own expense as often as not. He usually succeeds (I say "usually" only because some of his targets are a little obvious - shooting fish in a barrel as it were). Scattered throughout the book are little quizzes (Name the most biased News Anchor, Guess how certain modern-day celebrities would behave if they had been aboard the Titanic), lists (How to tell if you've joined the vast right-wing conspiracy), and even a faux news item reporting on the expulsion of his less than scholarly teenage son from Dartmouth (despite his never having actually been ADMITTED in the first place). His chapters on why we should hate the French (as gleefully nasty as only a lapsed Francophile can be), the sexcapades of Bill Clinton, and the sad decline of the New York Times are by themselves almost worth the price of admission. Stein also writes quite seriously (even movingly) of the trials and tribulations involved in keeping his 20-year marriage together, as well what it's like raising children amidst an increasingly coarse public culture. Overall though, the tone is light, and infused (despite all the great zingers) with a genuine generosity of spirit. After all, as Stein himself halfway concedes at one point,his "journey" was not as long or ardous as it may seem on the surface. He was never THAT far left, and he's not THAT far right today. Indeed, much like one Ronald Wilson Reagan a generation earlier, he didn't so much leave the Democratic Party, as feel that the Party left him. All in all, this is a breezy, entertaining, well-written work. It should be required reading for doubt-ridden liberals of all ages, if only to demonstrate that "The Dark Side" is not really so dark after all. Even if they don't "cross over", if it at least enables them to reevaluate their more dated notions and defend their position with vigorous argument as opposed to bromides and ad hominen personal attacks, and do so without guilt or recrimination, this book will have performed a valuable service.
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