Book Reviews

Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief (Ronald Hutton)

Most know about the English Civil War, and that it ended with the execution of Charles I, in 1649. But this is not really true. That war, the First English Civil War, which alone...

The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol (Carl Schmitt)

In this challenging book, Carl Schmitt analyzes the modern state through the life and death of the Leviathan state of Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan, the “mortal god,” dominated the early modern era, but contained within...

The Martian General’s Daughter (Theodore Judson)

What is America? This may seem like a strange question to ask after reading a book titled The Martian General’s Daughter. But it is the most important question that we who live in the...

A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South (Peter Cozzens)

I have long been fascinated by the wars between the European settlers of America and those whom they conquered and displaced, the American Indians. I grew up near a famous battlefield memorial of those...

Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia (John P. Burgess)

Americans don’t understand the Russians. Americans don’t even try to understand the Russians, for the most part. I don’t understand the Russians, even if I should, given that my father was a professor of...

To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism (Sean McMeekin)

Unlike the cats grilled by the illegals invited by our rulers to invade once-decent towns all over America, Communism has nine lives, or more. Why is it that Communism, the most destructive and evil...

Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence (Bryan Burrough)

Never in history has targeted violence by individuals or small groups, killings and bombings, what the Russians once called “propaganda of the deed,” ever led to the replacement of a governing system, or even...

The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times (Eduard Habsburg)

Mirrors for princes, books of advice aimed at those who rule, have fallen out of style in our modern, supposedly democratic age. Books of advice for commoners, however, are ubiquitous, though most of them...

The Total State: How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies (Auron MacIntyre)

For many Americans, the Constitution is their spirit animal, which protects and guides them. Never mind that how we are ruled bears very little resemblance to the actual Constitution, or that the Regime pays...

Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat (Grant Achatz)

What we see as history is always downstream from the actions of great men, working with the challenges given them. Such men are very rare, and their necessary traits include extreme discipline and focus,...