I missed this. Yes, I was impressed by Postrel, and though I like Roiphe's work, I wouldn't call her right wing, plainly not by subjective intention anyway.
I should qualify the point, I find much to agree with in rightist theory, but I do think that they have been more fecund than the left in the last twenty years.
I am thinking for example of the communitarians, like MacIntyre or Sandel. Or for example of the good books on class in America, like Phillips' Rich and Poor. And, though I know it will throw everyone into paroxysms of rage, I would also put in a word for Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, which raised an issue of intellectual life in a way that I'm not sure that the left ever did. Also worth mentioning on these lines are Alain Finkielkraut's book on the Sleep of Reason. Though he's more of a social democrat, I think the books of the late Christopher Lasch tell us more about the state of the culture than, say, Stuart Hall's. As critics of capitalism, didn't George Soros and even the evil James Goldsmith make more of a splash than the ten zillionth dog-eared Marxist pamphlet on the crisis? Or Edward Luttwak?
Of course, there have been some great books from the left over the same period. I would count Doug's Wall Street amongst those, as well as William Greider's Who Will Tell the People?, and the new one. Mike Davis' City of Quartz was remarkable, too, as was Walden Bello's People and Power in the Pacific. If we go back far enough, there's Said's Orientalism (1978?) and the cream of the post-structuralists. My hot tip, is Francis Stonor Saunder's recent history of the Cold War, which is remarkable. I would be interested to know who else you would put on that list.
However, at the risk of being depressing, may I suggest that there are good books on the left, from time to time, but no definitive points of reference. No History and Class Consciousness, no Being and Nothingness, no Wretched of the Earth, no Female Eunuch, no Imperialism: Highest Stage of Capitalism.
The best books I've read recently, those that have the measure of the times, are
James Nolan Therapeutic State Katie Roiphe The Morning After Elaine Showalter Hystories Terry Eagleton On Postmodernism Murray Bookchin Re-enchanting humanity Manjit Kumar and John Gillot Science and the Retreat from Reason Norman Levitt Prometheus Bedevilled Slavoj Zizek The Ticklish Subject Alan Sokal Intellecutal Impostures Robert Hughes Culture of Complaint The late Cornelius Castoriadis World in Fragments Richard Rorty Achieving Our Country
-- Jim heartfield