It takes real skill to pick the right fight in politics. Doing so is a high-risk enterprise, since many spats descend into bombast or bitterness that blackens the names of both combatants. The politician who takes the exchange too seriously can come across as nasty and unpleasant. For others, endless squabbling can limit their ability to compromise or achieve great things. Ed Koch, who died 10 years ago this month, showed us how to do it.

Koch loved to do battle. Over the course of a 45-year career as congressman, mayor of New York, and columnist, he engaged in significant disagreements, tiffs, spats, and outright hostilities with some of New York's and America's most famous people and politicians.

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2022 may in retrospect be seen as the year in which the West began to recognize the threat of an alliance of autocrats, and began to see hope for countering that alliance. Vladimir Putin's February invasion of Ukraine was an eye-opener, and many observers feared that the unstoppable Russian army would quickly overrun Ukraine. These fears were overblown. As with many armies in tyrannical systems, Putin's army is unwieldy, tactically unsound and performs poorly when tested.

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This is my tenth year of writing this annual review of books I've read, which means that I have read well over 1,000 books in the process of providing these year-end selections for you, Dear Reader.

This effort has been incredibly rewarding, both intellectually and culturally. I have also thoroughly enjoyed the positive feedback of NRO readers who have told me their thoughts on books I recommend or, even better, that they have selected books to read based on my recommendations that year.

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This was a hard year for conservatives. In 2022, we mourned the loss of a host of influential and important thinkers on the Right. The intellectual wing of the conservative movement has always been a vital force for inspiring, presenting, and driving home conservative ideas. The conservatives we lost in this past year all played a part in this dynamic exchange, in newspapers, at think tanks, in academia, on the judiciary, and in entertainment. The voices they provided helped conservative ideas get heard — and for that we can be grateful.

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The historic Abraham Accords, so named in order to emphasize Judaism, Christianity, and Islam's shared origin, were signed in 2020 between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Bahrain, and Morocco, and may be the most important—and certainly the most unanticipated—peace agreement of the 21st century.

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