Thucydides’s Challenge

Thucydides’s Challenge

How to Think about War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy by Thucydides, edited by Johanna Hanink. Princeton University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 336 pages, $17. Reviewed by Nick Burns If pulled from his grave near the base of the Pnyx Hill, unceremoniously revivified,...
Sufism as Civil Religion?

Sufism as Civil Religion?

Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought by Hüseyin Yilmaz. Princeton University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 384 pages, $40. Reviewed by Fitzroy Morrissey In his very useful pocket-guide The Caliphate: A Pelican Introduction (2016), the...
The Possibilities and Impossibilities of Willmoore Kendall

The Possibilities and Impossibilities of Willmoore Kendall

by Joshua Tait There are many legends about the political theorist Willmoore Kendall. A great deal of them are true. He was a founding editor of National Review. He reported on the Spanish Civil War. He worked in military intelligence. He spoke three languages and...
The Bloody (Congressional) Road to Disunion

The Bloody (Congressional) Road to Disunion

The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War By Joanne B. Freeman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. Hardcover, 480 pages, $28. Reviewed by John Bicknell One could make the case that Yale professor Joanne Freeman is obsessed with people getting...
Confessions of a Jet-Set Conservative

Confessions of a Jet-Set Conservative

The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right by Max Boot. Liveright, 2018. Hardcover, 288 pages, $25. Reviewed by Ben Sixsmith Max Boot, like newspaper columnist Jennifer Rubin, once claimed to be a conservative critic of President Donald Trump, but has become...