Less Snark, More Penetrating Insight

Lee Beck gives five stars to Heads in the Sand:

The jump from blog to book worked well for Yglesias. I get the sense that he was pushed toward a less snarky, slightly stilted style, but you essentially get the same tightly reasoned and witty passages you'd expect from his longer posts or magazine stuff. What's surprising (for a blogger) is that these passages actually thread together into one continuous and earnest argument, a case for traditional liberal internationalism.

Not, I hope, too earnest -- there is stuff in there about Darth Vader's theory of hegemonic stability (similar to Bush's, led to the breakdown of the polity he thought he was strengthening) and, of course, the right-wing's Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics. At any rate, buy the book. We can count both blog readership and book sales, you know, and when the numbers don't match up my feelings are hurt :-(