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History

The Long View: The Last Generation of the Roman Republic By Erich S. Gruen

Like John J. Reilly, I too am fond of making allusions to the late Roman Republic and comparing it to the present, but this book review also makes the excellent point that you shouldn’t try to map politics of the present too closely onto the past. What goes by

The Spartan Regime by Paul Rahe Book Review

Paul A. Rahe’s The Spartan Regime [Amazon link] is a slim volume on Sparta is absolutely packed with details. Rahe blends history, paleolinguistics, archeology, and even ancient DNA into his argument for why Sparta ended up with one of the most astonishing social and legal structures of the classical

The Long View: The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited Edited by John Matthews

This is a follow-up and a reconsideration of an earlier work on the relationship between the Rosicrucian movement and the subsequent flowering of scientific inquiry in Europe. In short, Francis Yates’ argument was that the Royal Society, and other organs of the Enlightenment were the fruits of a millenarian movement

The Long View: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900

Now that #Brexit might finally be upon us, here is a prescient book review from 2007 about the peculiar philosophy that made it possible more than a decade later. I am afraid this book is an example of a peculiar deleterious effect that the European Union has had on conservatism

The Long View: Macrohistory and Macrohistorians: Perspectives on Individual, Social, and Civilizational Change

This is a very early book review by John J. Reilly. I’ve done something I don’t usually do, which is add links in to John’s work. In this case, it made sense, because John discussed almost all of the authors listed in this textbook at some point

The Long View: Twentieth Century The History of the World, 1901 to 2000 By J.M. Roberts

If I could pick a musical representation of the twentieth century, it might be VNV Nation’s album, Automatic. Ronan Harris has an ability to write lyrics that distill things to their essence, and the essence of this album is the twentieth century’s technological progress and scientific optimism. This

The Path of the Martyrs Book Review

The Path of the Martyrs: Charles Martel, The Battle of Tours and the Birth of Europe by Ed West Kindle Edition, 496 pages Published June 26, 2018 by Galaxy's Edge ASIN B07F2M73XV How could I not review a history book that starts off with the Battle of Tours?