What We Once Knew About Global Influence

What We Once Knew About Global Influence

Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea by John Lehman. W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. Hardcover, 368 pages, $28. Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa There are still many foreign policy “experts” who refuse to credit the policies of President Ronald Reagan for the...
Defending Against the Old Chaos

Defending Against the Old Chaos

The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire by A. Wess Mitchell. Princeton University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 416 pages, $35. Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa Between 1700 and 1866, the Austrian Habsburgs skillfully navigated the great power politics of Europe, withstanding...

One Hundred Years of Communism

One hundred years ago in October 1917, communism as an ideology and a political system seized power in Russia. Bolshevik rule was not a result of a popular uprising—that had occurred in March 1917, when Czar Nicholas II abdicated in favor of a provisional government....

Novak’s ‘Moral Clarity’ Revisited

Michael Novak, the brilliant scholar and Catholic theologian, died on February 17, 2017 at the age of 83. A liberal turned conservative, Novak, who had earlier studied for the priesthood, authored more than twenty books, represented the United States on the United...

The Complex War Legacy of FDR

1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History by Jay Winik. Simon & Schuster, 2015. Hardcover, 656 pages, $35.Franklin Roosevelt is generally considered to be a great wartime leader, even by most conservatives. World War II, after all, is often called “the good...