Francis Fukuyama won the 'Oops I wish I hadn't written that' Award for 1992. He wrote a book (based on a previous essay in a little known journal) called "The End of History and the Last Man" In it he'd declared that with the collapse of Communism the world had finished with politics derived from fundamental polarities and had settled on the inherent goodness of liberal democracy and liberal economic practice.

A good neo-conservative think-tank man, in other words.

One assumes he's had a little time on his hands over the last months.

He's done what men of a certain age do when their skills and abilities are judged to belong to another era which is to fall back on their hobbies - in his case building quite swish furniture with hand tools.

All of which has doubtless drawn him to a book called "Shop Class as Soulcraft" by Matthew Crawford, for which Fukuyama has written a quite laudable review in the New York Times' Sunday Book Review.