The National Review Politically Incorrect Reference Guide. - book reviews

National Review, Feb 21, 1994 by John R. Coyne, Jr.

The National Review Politically Incorrect Reference Guide, compiled by the National Review Research Library (Russell Jenkins, John J. Virtes, and Frederick Campano), foreword by Rush Limbaugh, introduction by William F. Buckley Jr. (National Review Books, 308 pp., $19.95)

FROM THE DAYS of Research Directors Agatha Schmidt Dowd and Robin Wu, through the reign of Dorothy McCartney, NR's library with its unsung but splendid staff has been what Rush Limbaugh calls "an excellence in researching network unto itself." This book, providing as it does a fast and convenient referrence guide for those of us who like to get straight to the right side of the story, is a typical NR research product--easy to use, direct and to the point, and deceptively simple, imposing order and direction on complex and convoluted subjects. Topics are arranged alphabetically ("Germany," "Gold/Gold Standard,") and cross-referenced where necessary ("Fiber Optics: see Communications, Technology"); sources are divided into appropriate categories ("Books and Articles," "Organizations"). The guide contains topics of general and current interest that are not in themselves conservative. But the entries under such rubrics--"Multiculturalism," for instance--represent a careful conservative culling. There are problems-- some of them symptomatic of conservative deficiencies. Under "Humor," there are only nine entries, six of them P. J. O'Rourke. And there are very occasional lapses: a mistake on page 219 puts Leo Strauss out of alphabetical order--perhaps a Straussian inevitability. But quibbles aside, this book, and one hopes its timely and periodic supplements, provides an invaluable, right-thinking research road map.