Henrik Berggren – Underbara dagar framför oss, En biografi över Olof Palme (2010)

The social democrat Olof Palme represented a strain of American post-war liberalism, imported into Swedish politics in the shape of an upper-class golden boy.  His sharp mind and sharper tongue got him hand-picked into the political elite at a young age, happily timed so that he came to be in sync with the new spirit of the age.

Recommended: Yes.

Kenneth Minogue – The Servile Mind, How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life (2010)

Cultural conservatism is irrelevant to me as an overall worldview, but relevant as a correction to liberal and democratic excesses.  Minogue picks the (social) democratic worldview apart, analyzing its paradoxes and illusions, and argues that traditional individualism, which saw freedom and responsibility as fused together, has been replaced by a new form that uses the state to separate the two.

Recommended: Yes.

Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen – Den gode krig? Danmark i Afghanistan 2006-2010 (2011)

Denmark has played an active role in the war in Afghanistan, losing 40 lives in the process, but Rasmussen argues it’s not clear that they’ve achieved anything, beyond proving their military worth to themselves and to NATO.

Recommended: Yes.