The Worthy House

American History, Book Reviews, Charles, Civil War, Communism, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Social Justice Warriors, War, Wars To Come

On the Finnish Civil War

Published by Charles Haywood

You have likely never heard of the Finnish Civil War. A brief war, in some ways a simple war, it lasted only three months, from late January to late...

November 30, 2020

comments 13

Analysis, Charles, Civil War, Communism, Eastern European History, European History, Military History, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, War, Wars To Come

Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (Rod Dreher)

Published by Charles Haywood

A disease is going around. No, not the Wuhan Plague. This malady only affects the Right, and I name it Scrutonism. The symptoms of Scrutonism are a razor-sharp ability...

October 19, 2020

American History, Atheism, Book Reviews, Charles, Christian History, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism, Religion, Social Behavior, Social Justice Warriors, Technology, Wars To Come

The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return (Michael Anton)

Published by Charles Haywood

Michael Anton’s latest, half analysis and half prophecy, is simultaneously terrifying and clarifying. As I have said before, I align very closely with Anton in both core politics and...

September 8, 2020

comments 16

American History, Book Reviews, Charles, Civil War, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism, Social Justice Warriors, Wars To Come

Against Masks

Published by Charles Haywood

The great social argument of this instant is whether everyone should now, because of the Wuhan Plague, be required to wear face masks, and if so, under what circumstances....

May 28, 2020

comments 98

Analysis, Charles, Life Advice, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Social Behavior

Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein)

Published by Charles Haywood

Starship Troopers, sixty years old, is a famous work of science fiction. As with most Robert Heinlein novels, the point is more the ideas than plot or character. Heinlein...

May 12, 2020

comments 10

Book Reviews, Charles, Fiction, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Sex Roles, Social Behavior, War

Bronze Age Mindset (Bronze Age Pervert)

Published by Charles Haywood

I am fascinated by what is to come. For someone who came of age imbibing the narrow, facile, weak, always-second-place conservative pieties of the late 1980s and the 1990s,...

September 23, 2019

comments 20

Book Reviews, Charles, Classical History, Conservatism, Great Fragmentation, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism, Primitive Cultures, Sex Roles, Social Behavior

On Space

Published by Charles Haywood

I am often asked to define my political program, Foundationalism. In essence, this is a request to state its core principles. The ultimate, first-level principle of Foundationalism, is that...

July 13, 2019

comments 15

Analysis, Charles, Foundationalism, Popular, Science, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Technology

On Francisco Franco

Published by Charles Haywood

Few Americans know much about Francisco Franco, leader of the winning side in the Spanish Civil War and subsequently dictator of Spain. Yet from 1936 until 1975, he was...

April 16, 2019

comments 19

Analysis, Biography & Autobiography, Book Reviews, Charles, Civil War, Communism, European History, Left-Liberalism, Military History, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism, War, Wars To Come

Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline (Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson)

Published by Charles Haywood

Anybody who has been paying attention has long grasped the truth: underpopulation, not overpopulation, is our problem. This will soon be true on a global scale, it is already...

February 12, 2019

comments 19

Apocalypse, Book Reviews, Charles, Political Economy, Popular, Science, Sex Roles, Social Behavior

On Battlefield V

Published by Charles Haywood

Last year, the giant gaming company Electronic Arts released the latest version of an extremely popular military game, Battlefield V. Each release in the series takes place in a...

January 16, 2019

Analysis, Business & Money, Charles, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Sex Roles, Social Justice Warriors, Technology

On the “Dark Enlightenment,” and of Curtis Yarvin / Mencius Moldbug

Published by Charles Haywood

My project here is to analyze, in the detail required for all necessary understanding, the thought of Curtis Yarvin, who wrote under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug. Yarvin is the...

June 27, 2018

comments 24

American History, Analysis, Atheism, Charles, Conservatism, Ethnography, Great Fragmentation, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism

The Power of the Powerless (Václav Havel)

Published by Charles Haywood

This book was once famous, but was mostly forgotten when Communism died and so-called liberal democracy seemed ascendant. It is increasingly famous again, and relevant, in these days of...

May 18, 2018

comments 14

Book Reviews, Charles, Communism, Conservatism, Eastern European History, European History, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism, Social Behavior, Social Justice Warriors, Wars To Come

The Revolt of the Masses (José Ortega y Gasset)

Published by Charles Haywood

Oh, but this is a fascinating book. Written in 1930 by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, it is one of those books that is occasionally mentioned, especially...

March 24, 2018

Book Reviews, Charles, European History, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Social Behavior

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (Steven Pinker)

Published by Charles Haywood

As with Steven Pinker’s earlier The Better Angels of Our Nature, of which this is really an expansion and elucidation, I was frustrated by this book. On the one...

February 16, 2018

Book Reviews, Charles, Great Divergence, Left-Liberalism, Political Economy, Popular, Social Behavior, Technology

Why Liberalism Failed (Patrick J. Deneen)

Published by Charles Haywood

Poor Francis Fukuyama. He has been a punching bag ever since he unwisely declared the End of History, more than twenty-five years ago. Fukuyama, of course, meant that the...

December 19, 2017

comments 14

American History, Book Reviews, Charles, Great Fragmentation, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism, Wars To Come

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
T. E. Lawrence

As with most of my book reviews, I am not actually reviewing this book, at least in the traditional sense. Rather, I am delivering my own thoughts. If you don’t like that, well, you’re in the wrong place.
Charles Haywood

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Recent

We (Yevgeny Zamyatin)

Published by Charles Haywood

Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, written in 1921, is the ur-dystopia of all modern dystopias. True, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984, both of which this book influenced,...

April 23, 2021

comments 20

Book Reviews, Charles, Fiction, Political Discussion & Analysis, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Social Behavior, Wars To Come

Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth (Peter Turchin)

Published by Charles Haywood

Peter Turchin leads a recent academic movement to quantify and mathematize human history. That is, instead of analyzing history thematically, or engaging in broad analysis of happenings and trends,...

April 20, 2021

comment 1

Book Reviews, Charles, Longitudinal History, Primitive Cultures, Social Behavior, War

The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming (Jean-Martin Fortier)

Published by Charles Haywood

My barn has a split personality. On one side, you may not be surprised to learn, dusty in the gloom, carefully organized and stacked, are defensive implements of war,...

April 12, 2021

comments 32

Book Reviews, Business & Money, Charles, Gardening & Farming, Life Advice, Political Economy, Practical Skills

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (René Girard)

Published by Charles Haywood

It has long been fashionable to regard Christianity as myth, no different in substance than many other ancient myths. Sometimes this is done to glibly dismiss Christ’s message; sometimes...

March 30, 2021

comments 32

Book Reviews, Charles, Christian History, Christian Theology, Classical History, Religion, Social Behavior

On the January 2021 Electoral Justice Protest

Published by Charles Haywood

On January 6, several thousand men and women made their voices heard—first around, and then some in, the United States Capitol. This event has received vast attention and been...

March 23, 2021

comments 60

American History, Analysis, Charles, Law, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Social Behavior, Wars To Come

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

Published by Charles Haywood

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,...

March 10, 2021

comments 16

American History, Book Reviews, Charles, Law, Political Discussion & Analysis, Sex Roles, Social Behavior, Social Justice Warriors

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,...

March 3, 2021

comments 26

Book Reviews, British History, Colonialism, Ethnography, Political Discussion & Analysis, Primitive Cultures, Social Behavior, The Orient

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...

February 23, 2021

comments 43

Administrative State, American History, Analysis, Charles, Foundationalism, Law, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism, Social Behavior, Wars To Come

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...

February 15, 2021

comments 15

Biography & Autobiography, Book Reviews, Charles, Colonialism, European History, Foundationalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Post-Liberalism

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....

February 8, 2021

comments 18

American History, Biography & Autobiography, Book Reviews, Charles

Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster (Helen Andrews)

Published by Charles Haywood

What is a “baby boomer”? Technically, it is an American born between 1945 and 1964. More communicatively, a boomer is a member of the worst generation in American history,...

February 3, 2021

comments 28

American History, Book Reviews, Charles, Social Behavior

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...

January 29, 2021

comments 18

Biography & Autobiography, Book Reviews, Charles, Civil War, Communism, Eastern European History, European History, Military History, War, Wars To Come

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,...

January 22, 2021

comments 3

Biography & Autobiography, Book Reviews, Charles, Classical History

Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Mark Bray)

Published by Charles Haywood

More than twenty years ago, as a very young man, I traveled in Ukraine. In one place, the local authorities were excavating a mass grave from the 1930s. Hundreds...

January 18, 2021

American History, Book Reviews, Charles, Civil War, Communism, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Social Justice Warriors, War, Wars To Come

4th Generation Warfare Handbook (William S. Lind)

Published by Charles Haywood

2021 will be the twentieth anniversary of our endless, pointless war in Afghanistan, and 2023 the twentieth anniversary of our endless, pointless war in Iraq. This book, the ideas...

January 5, 2021

comments 15

Book Reviews, Charles, Military History, War

Retrotopia (John Michael Greer)

Published by Charles Haywood

What will the future look like? Not much like our stupid present, certainly, but complaining about the present is easy, while offering a coherent positive vision of the future...

January 1, 2021

comments 9

American History, Book Reviews, Charles, Civil War, Fiction, Political Discussion & Analysis, Political Economy, Social Behavior, Technology, War, Wars To Come

The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan)

Published by Charles Haywood

In their eternal quest to remake reality, a perennial target of the Left is the family: man, woman, and children, the bedrock of all human societies. The family, by...

December 28, 2020

comments 18

American History, Book Reviews, Charles, Foundationalism, Left-Liberalism, Life Advice, Political Discussion & Analysis, Political Economy, Post-Liberalism, Sex Roles, Social Behavior

Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation (Peter Cozzens)

Published by Charles Haywood

I have always been aware of the great Shawnee Indian war chief Tecumseh. I grew up within walking distance of the site of his confederacy’s defeat, by William Henry...

December 11, 2020

comments 17

American History, Biography & Autobiography, Book Reviews, Charles, Ethnography, Military History, Primitive Cultures, War

Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition (James R. Payton Jr.)

Published by Charles Haywood

I have always been keenly interested in comparative theology. However, as a recent adherent to Eastern Orthodoxy, I approach analysis, as opposed to knowledge, of Orthodox theology as presumptively...

December 3, 2020

comments 23

Book Reviews, Charles, Christian History, Christian Theology, Religion

On the Finnish Civil War

Published by Charles Haywood

You have likely never heard of the Finnish Civil War. A brief war, in some ways a simple war, it lasted only three months, from late January to late...

November 30, 2020

comments 13

Analysis, Charles, Civil War, Communism, Eastern European History, European History, Military History, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, War, Wars To Come

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (Michael Shellenberger)

Published by Charles Haywood

Whenever, which is often, I see in the media that “experts say . . . ,” I immediately assume what follows is lies. The utter tone-deafness of using this...

November 12, 2020

Apocalypse, Book Reviews, Charles, Political Economy, Religion, Science, Technology

Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (Rod Dreher)

Published by Charles Haywood

A disease is going around. No, not the Wuhan Plague. This malady only affects the Right, and I name it Scrutonism. The symptoms of Scrutonism are a razor-sharp ability...

October 19, 2020

Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Kurdish Snipers Who Broke ISIS (Azad Cudi)

Published by Charles Haywood

This book appears, to the casual reader, to be propaganda designed to persuade a Great Power, the United States, to aid the Kurdish fight for independence. Like all good...

October 12, 2020

comments 14

Book Reviews, Charles, Colonialism, Communism, Islam & The Islamic World, Military History, The Orient, War

Neuromancer (William Gibson)

Published by Charles Haywood

When I first read Neuromancer, a science fiction classic of the modern age, twenty-some years ago, serious people believed that our certain technological future was one of accelerating, boundless...

October 9, 2020

Book Reviews, Charles, Fiction, Science, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Technology

A Concise History of Finland (David Kirby)

Published by Charles Haywood

Who thinks much about Finland? During the Cold War, because of its buffer position, it was occasionally in the news. More recently, Nokia was prominent for a while. But...

October 1, 2020

comments 5

Book Reviews, Charles, Eastern European History, Ethnography, European History

Long Range Shooting Handbook: The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Precision Rifle Shooting (Ryan M. Cleckner)

Published by Charles Haywood

Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you wish for peace, prepare for war. So said the Romans. But there is a corollary, another truth, also as old as mankind....

September 25, 2020

comments 5

Apocalypse, Book Reviews, Charles, Civil War, Guns, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, War, Wars To Come

The Soul of an Entrepreneur: Work and Life Beyond the Startup Myth (David Sax)

Published by Charles Haywood

The “why” of entrepreneurship varies by entrepreneur. My core “why” is money. I want, and have always wanted, money, for what money can do. Whether that is avarice, or...

September 22, 2020

Book Reviews, Business & Money, Charles, Economics, Life Advice, Political Economy, Practical Skills

The Outlaws (Ernst von Salomon)

Published by Charles Haywood

The Outlaws is advertised to modern readers as a memoir of the post-World War I struggles between the armed German Left and Right, between the Communists and the Freikorps....

September 17, 2020

comments 4

Biography & Autobiography, Book Reviews, Charles, Civil War, Communism, European History, Political Discussion & Analysis, Post-Liberalism, Radical Right Authoritarianism, War, Wars To Come

Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road (Matthew B. Crawford)

Published by Charles Haywood

Philosopher Matthew Crawford’s third book is ostensibly a book about driving, but as with all Crawford’s works, that is merely the jumping-off point. Crawford expands our minds by exploring...

September 14, 2020

American History, Book Reviews, Charles, Life Advice, Practical Skills, Sex Roles, Social Behavior, Technology

The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return (Michael Anton)

Published by Charles Haywood

Michael Anton’s latest, half analysis and half prophecy, is simultaneously terrifying and clarifying. As I have said before, I align very closely with Anton in both core politics and...

September 8, 2020

comments 16

American History, Book Reviews, Charles, Civil War, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism, Social Justice Warriors, Wars To Come

Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All (Deirdre Nansen McCloskey)

Published by Charles Haywood

This is a special review. It is special because it is the last of its kind. I no longer intend to spend my time, and your time, on books...

September 1, 2020

comments 38

Book Reviews, Charles, Economics, Left-Liberalism, Political Discussion & Analysis, Post-Liberalism, Social Behavior, Wars To Come

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire (Roger Crowley)

Published by Charles Haywood

Without specific intention, I seem to have turned into a Roger Crowley fanboy, as shown by that I have now read every one of his books. Crowley is a...

August 15, 2020

comments 4

Book Reviews, Charles, Colonialism, European History, Islam & The Islamic World, Military History, Renaissance History, The Orient, War

Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine (Barry Strauss)

Published by Charles Haywood

The Roman Empire, or at least the western Roman Empire, is a history of decline, as we all know. But not linear decline, and that matters. Ten Caesars, the...

August 8, 2020

Biography & Autobiography, Book Reviews, Charles, Classical History

The Saxon Savior: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth-Century Heliand (G. Ronald Murphy)

Published by Charles Haywood

Immediately before the Ascension, the last command of Christ to the Apostles was to “make disciples of all nations.” Ever since, at least until very recently, proselytizing has been...

July 5, 2020

comments 0

Book Reviews, Charles, Christian History, Christian Theology, European History, Medieval History, Religion

The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Edward C. Banfield)

Published by Charles Haywood

Most cultures throughout history have been terrible. The natural state of so-called civilized man is somewhere between today’s Venezuela and today’s Somalia. Large-scale success, exceptions to the general rule,...

June 27, 2020

Book Reviews, Charles, Ethnography, European History, Great Divergence, Social Behavior

When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany (Adam Fergusson)

Published by Charles Haywood

Inflation, like most society-wide monetary happenings, is always complex and often incompletely grasped. At least this is true of its causes; of its effects, most of all its social...

June 15, 2020

comments 3

Book Reviews, Charles, Economics, European History, Political Economy, Social Behavior

Against Masks

Published by Charles Haywood

The great social argument of this instant is whether everyone should now, because of the Wuhan Plague, be required to wear face masks, and if so, under what circumstances....

May 28, 2020

comments 98

Analysis, Charles, Life Advice, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Social Behavior

SAM: One Robot, a Dozen Engineers, and the Race to Revolutionize the Way We Build (Jonathan Waldman)

Published by Charles Haywood

The classic American path to technological success has been for driven tinkerers to obsessively work to solve a problem, from Eli Whitney to Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs. Such...

May 23, 2020

Art & Architecture & Building, Book Reviews, Charles, Practical Skills, Technology

Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein)

Published by Charles Haywood

Starship Troopers, sixty years old, is a famous work of science fiction. As with most Robert Heinlein novels, the point is more the ideas than plot or character. Heinlein...

May 12, 2020

comments 10

Book Reviews, Charles, Fiction, Political Discussion & Analysis, Popular, Post-Liberalism, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Sex Roles, Social Behavior, War

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (Lawrence Wright)

Published by Charles Haywood

We all know religious devotion has declined precipitously in America. Most of what religion remains is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, which is the sherbet of religions, an unsatisfying imitation of...

May 4, 2020