Neocons. Paleo-cons. "South Park" conservatives. The last thing the right side of the political spectrum needed was the discovery of a new subspecies. But like it or not, Rod Dreher says "Crunchy Cons" like him are part of a growing nationwide subculture of conservatives who are united by lefty-sounding cultural and spiritual sensibilities, not political ideology. "Crunchy Cons" don't just belong to agricultural co-ops, hate TV and worship Whole Foods stores. They home-school their kids, fight against sprawl and distrust/dislike the free market -- yet still find themselves voting Republican. If they are like Dreher, a smart Dallas Morning News opinion editor who used to work at National Review, they also prefer small government, eschew the pursuit of wealth for its own sake and try to live small, meaningful, communitarian lives that stress family togetherness, basic moral virtues and a strong Christian faith. Holding on to or trying to revive these romantic, crunchy (earthy) values of yesteryear is fine and dandy, of course. There's nothing wrong -- or inherently leftist -- with home-schooling or wanting to rehab Craftsman houses. Whether anyone who holds crunchy values is a genuine conservative is something only conservatives can decide. Dreher is passionate and honest about what is important to him, his lifestyle and soul. Though his book reads well, his morally and culturally superior tone gets old. So does his near-religious hatred of our often mindless Wal-Mart & McMansion materialism -- and the hints that we are all helpless victims of it. Though no closet socialist, Dreher frequently mocks the market and those who revere its workings or accept its big-box efficiencies, which he laments bring so much change and pain to small-town businesses. Yet the cruel marketplace he so tiresomely and unfairly disparages is what has created the cultural and economic diversity that makes a crunchy conservative lifestyle possible. "The fundamental difference between crunchy conservatives and mainstream conservatives has to do with the place of the free market in society. Crunchy cons believe in the free market as an imperfect but just and effective means to the good society. When the market harms the good society, it should be reined in. Because crunchy cons, as conservatives, do not believe in the perfectibility or essential goodness of human nature, we keep squarely in front of us the truth that absent the restraints of religion, community, law, or custom, the commercial man will tend to respect no boundaries in the pursuit of personal gain. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, whether it's in the hands of big government or big business." A box of books

"Mao: The Unknown Story" by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (Knopf) Though still dead, Mao's chubby face "graces" millions of T-shirts worldwide. His responsibility for an estimated 70 million deaths makes him last century's No. 1 career mass murderer, but his reputation as a well-intentioned agrarian reformer, progressive scholar and nationalist hero of China also lives on. In 832 pages, the authors demolish these and other Communist Party-propagated myths and show Mao was a vicious totalitarian thug. Columnist Max Boot in The Weekly Standard called it a "blood-curdling indictment," which, despite its minor flaws and conspiratorial flavor, "succeeds better than any other book in exposing Mao as the monster that he was." "Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform" by Richard A. Posner (Rowman & Littlefield) Posner, the prolific author and U.S. Court of Appeals judge in Chicago, continues his scrutiny of how well our intelligence bureaucracy is -- and isn't -- working to keep America safe from future attacks from terrorists or rogue states. Using everything from organization theory, political science and cognitive psychology, he explains the intelligence structure's tangled workings and analyzes the latest post-9/11 reform efforts. Posner says reforms that centralize instead of decentralize intelligence-gathering only make us less safe. He contends what is needed is a new, separate domestic intelligence not run by the FBI. Ultimately, he's pessimistic that an efficient intelligence system can overcome the political, bureaucratic and constitutional obstacles to its creation. "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good," by William Easterly (Penguin Group) Easterly, an NYU economics prof, explains why "do-gooders" -- Western governments, foreign-aid institutions and rock stars -- have failed to dent Third World poverty and sickness despite spending $2.3 trillion over the last 50 years. It's a familiar, fundamental and apparently unlearnable flaw: Even the best, most well-intentioned plans and most generous bombardments of foreign aid don't work well or at all when imposed from on high by outsiders who don't take into account native cultural, social and political realities. Washington Post reviewer David Ignatius deemed the book readable, persuasive and devastating in its detail. Quick Quote "A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963" by Mark Fuhrman "When the Warren Report was published, critics pounced on the single bullet theory as the weakest link in the case against Oswald. Controversy over the single bullet theory cast suspicion on the whole Warren Commission investigation and its findings. The critics believed that the reenactment had been designed not for the investigators to learn what might have happened but to establish 'scientific' evidence for the single bullet theory and to convince a majority of the Commissioners. By working backwards from hypothesis to proof, Arlen Specter was able to create a scenario in which the single bullet theory was possible. ... Trying to nail down every detail of the shot sequence, Arlen Specter created evidence that cast doubt on the Warren Commission's findings ... ."

Half-page Books, written and compiled by Bill Steigerwald, appears on the last Sunday of each month.

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