Author: Charles Haywood

The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies (Scott Yenor)

You know what America needs? More mirrors for princes—the Renaissance genre of advice books directed at statesmen. On the Right, we have many books that identify, and complain about, the problems of modernity and the challenges facing us. Some of those books do offer concrete solutions, but their audience is usually either the educated masses, who cannot themselves translate those solutions into policy, or policymakers who have no actual power, or refuse to use the power they do have. Scott Yenor’s bold new book is directed at those who have the will to actually rule. He lays out what has been done to the modern family, why, and what can and should be done about it, by those who have power, now or in the future. Let’s hope the target audience pays attention.

Dark Emu (Bruce Pascoe)

Published by Charles Haywood

Americans do not understand Australia. At all. If Australia is brought up, they think of a few movie and television stars. They think of a vast red desert, perhaps, with a big rock, what’s-its-name (Ayers Rock), sticking up against a bright blue sky. They think Australians eat kangaroos (they don’t; they’re vermin). Most of all, they have a vague idea that Australians are a lot like Americans, only more informal, and more rugged and self-reliant. They once were, true, and a few still are. But the Australians are in many ways more ruined than Americans today (though we are accelerating to see if we can pass them). The 2014 book Dark Emu, or rather the insane racial-religious grift of which it is a small part, is one example.

On the Brawndo Tyranny

Published by Charles Haywood

America was, for much of its existence, defined as a nation of laws, not men, in the famous phrase of John Adams. No more. Now men, but only some men, rule. They rule as they please, in arbitrary, selective, self-benefitting fashion. Thus, what we live under is a tyranny, a system without rule of law. Unlike a traditional tyranny, though, our tyrant is not one man, but rather a compound being. Think the classic picture of Hobbes’s Leviathan, one giant and powerful undying creature, whose body is composed of the hive members of our rotten ruling class. But look more closely—our Leviathan is giant and powerful, yes, but is also drooling and imbecilic.

Salazar (Tom Gallagher)

Published by Charles Haywood

What will be the political system of the future, in the lands that are still optimistically, or naively, viewed as containing one American nation? Certainly, the current system is doomed, which necessarily means that an alternative will rise. Some replacements are flashy, full of promise mixed with danger, such as an American Augustus, Michael Anton’s Red Caesar. But other replacements have lower amplitude, and the quiet authoritarian corporatism exemplified by the Portugal of António de Oliveira Salazar is one such. As it happens, I think it would be a bad alternative for America. Nonetheless, Salazar’s creation, which was undoubtedly good for Portugal, deserves to be better known than it is, and to be understood, for the lessons it teaches us.

Kissinger: 1923–1968: The Idealist (Niall Ferguson)

Published by Charles Haywood

Did you know that Henry Kissinger is still alive? I didn’t, until I looked it up. (He’s ninety-seven years old.) Is he forgotten? I suspect so, by most people. Was he important to American history? I hate to break it to the Baby Boomers, but no, he wasn’t. He was important to them in their youth, as a condensed symbol of their hatred of decent America, and he seemed important to most at that time, but as with so many men who seem crucial in the moment, history will not judge Kissinger as good or bad, just irrelevant. Nonetheless, Niall Ferguson, a great admirer of Kissinger (as is evident from some of his other books), offers his wide readership this massive biography. But I can’t recommend it except to those with a particular interest in the person or the time.

Always with Honor: The Memoirs of General Wrangel (Pyotr Wrangel)

Published by Charles Haywood

I recently wrote of the Finnish Civil War, where the Whites defeated the Reds. In the twentieth century, that pattern was unfortunately the exception, with the more common result being seen in the Russian Civil War of 1918–20, where the Russian Reds defeated the Russian Whites. That struggle, though not as forgotten as the Finnish Civil War, does not loom large in modern consciousness, and books on it are rare. This volume, the recently-reprinted war memoir of Pyotr Wrangel, probably the most successful and certainly the most charismatic of the White generals, addresses that gap. It also carries many lessons, including about what might occur in a twenty-first-century ideological civil war in a large country.

The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny (Daisy Dunn)

Published by Charles Haywood

The Roman Empire gets a bad rap. This is particularly true of the members of its ruling class, who get the worse of the obvious comparison with Republican virtue, and are often viewed as placeholders and strivers orbiting around one emperor or another, offering nothing to the rest of mankind. No doubt many such existed. But we should not forget that the Empire was a very successful endeavor, especially in its early years, and success would not have been possible without at least some competent and virtuous men in the ruling class. Daisy Dunn’s The Shadow of Vesuvius profiles two such men: Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus; A.D. 23–79) and his nephew and adopted son, Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (A.D. 61–c. 113). The two men were very different, yet each strove to benefit and serve Rome, as well as to achieve great things himself, in a way our own ruling class has long since abandoned.