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In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and a Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times. It was the ascent of progress; it was the ascent of depravity. It was an age of love; it was an age of love. In short, it was, as the present age, an age when the good encountered evil… and who would prevail was a question of who had the will to do so and, to a degree, who had Providence on their side.

Much has been told, and many pages filled, with the rise of isolationism at home. Few pages have been devoted to the consequences of isolationism abroad; certainly, few books have been written which have focused on the immediate consequences of isolationism in the garden of the beasts, or, even more so, in the mouth of the dragon. This book is intriguing, therefore, for the reason that it covers not an unknown period of time, but an unknown place in that period. That is not to say that there have been few works on the rise of Hitler; there haven’t. But there has been remarkably little scholarly inquiry into what the American experience was in Hitler’s Berlin.

Erik Larson, with his typical dramatic flair for the good, the bad, and the ugly, traces the lives of two main people: the American ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, and his vivacious and promiscuous daughter, only in her second decade of life, yet already divorced, the flamboyant Martha. From love affair to love affair and diplomatic meetings to diplomatic meetings, Larson shows us, in an intimate way, I mean intimate quite literally, what life was like with Hitler’s rise, and what life was becoming.

The Germans we see in this picture are not the warlike and evil geniuses of World War II, though they were fast becoming that. Rather, Hitler and his government were at a desperate point, their government hanging by a lifeline. Largely, their survival was held in the balance by international perception, and since international perception was largely dictated by the letters of the American ambassador, William Dodd was bombarded with propaganda from the moment he landed on German soil. Instead of showing Hitler, Goring, and Goebbels as idiotic madmen intent on destroying the Jewish race, Larson gives a far more accurate, and far more disturbing, portrayal of the original Nazis. Despotic men, perhaps, but they were still men, and, like all men, had a distinctly personal side. Before they were masters of war, they were masters of diplomacy, yet never, and Larson makes this very clear, did Hitler or his inner circle ever consider stopping what they considered to be in the common good, the attaining of Lebensraum, the decimation of the Jewish population, or the persecution of Bolshevik sympathizers, for the sake of scoring foreign victories. Instead of compromising for the sake of gain, they gained exactly what they wanted without giving an inch, by lying. Larson shows us one lie after another put forth by Hitler, the head of the Gestapo, or Hermann Goring. In some cases, the lies were believed by the teller, but this did not make them any truer.

Secondly, this book shows the progressive distrust inside Hitler’s own coalition. This distrust would ultimately lead to a split, with courageous yet unsuccessful men such as Franz Papen taking a stand against Hitler, and other bloodthirsty opponents of Hitler, such as the head of the sexually perverse SA, Ernst Rohm, suffering the ultimate penalty for their ambition, with the culmination of the break coming on the Night of the Long Knives.

Larson’s chief strength is his ability to show not only the political or the military, but the personal. Certainly, I wish he would have spent less time discussing the ins and outs of Martha Dodd’s love life and more time focusing on the inner turmoil of the senior Dodd’s conscience as he came to realize that he was being used, but either way, this is historical narrative at its best. Perhaps it would not be the equivalent of an academic essay or a biography of William E. Dodd; it certainly does not compare to William Shirer’s Diary from Berlin during this period, but it doesn’t have to. The point is not to show what has already been shown, but to show something new and, with it, to give a new perspective.

Perhaps the most striking and fascinating part of this book is the fact that William Dodd left the United States as an avowed Wilsonian isolationist. He desired intensely to cooperate with Germany. Martha Dodd, too, initially mocked anti-Nazi protestors. Both were skeptical of Jewish persecution, with the ambassador urging President Roosevelt repeatedly to do nothing or to calm the outrage of prominent Jewish intellectuals in America over the rise of Hitler’s antisemitic efforts. Yet by the time of Dodd’s departure, a departure which occurred precisely because the ambassador no longer believed that permanent peace with Germany was possible, Dodd had come to realize the evil of the looming threat, and its intensity. He started the journey a skeptic; he returned a convert. This was not ideological fervor that pushed him to intense criticism of Hitler and Germany; if anything, Dodd was too hesitant to realize the threat. It is through the eyes of Dodd’s family that we can realize the incompleteness and dishonesty of revisionist histories which suggest that the war was by no means a foregone conclusion, that a negotiated peace could have been settled, and that antisemitism was perhaps a fluke and not a foundation. Such a narrative has no grounds in the truth, and Larson shows it masterfully.

In the end, Dodd realized what all men must at some point realize: that, as Bonhoeffer said, “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself,” or, better yet, Burke, who stated that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Though this book is history, it is a history of a movement, a movement which could well replicate itself in our day and age, for there truly is nothing new under the sun. Perhaps Larson never intended it this way, but this book is, above all, a call to action.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

May 12th, 2026

The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines by Jonathan Horn

In times of war, there are two types of people: the victors and the losers, but is it possible that both are fighting for the same thing and against the same enemy? Is it even possible that for victory to be achieved, losses must also be sustained, losses that involve a degree of self-sacrifice, an eschewing of self-aggrandizement, and an acceptance of fate incomparable under almost any other circumstances? If so, the battle for the Philippines, during the opening shots of World War II in the Pacific theatre, is exactly such a situation, and historian Jonathan Horn has invited us to step back into time and witness for ourselves the cost of victory: the fate not only of the generals, as the title suggests, but of the nation which the generals represented.

Nearly everyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of World War II, and of the American strategy during it, exemplified by a Europe-first approach embraced by Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, has also heard of the self-serving yet brilliant general who pushed for a front that prioritized what he saw as a more immediate threat: the rising sun of a Japanese empire. Such a man was Douglas MacArthur, and in the half century since his death, his actions during both the Second World War and the subsequent Korean War, in which he would serve admirably but would be discharged dishonorably, the man’s legacy has been fiercely disputed by historians, political strategists, and military commanders alike. Two rival visions of MacArthur’s personality have overwhelmed the imagination of our time. Jonathan Horn does not take either of the two most typical approaches as regards MacArthur, either presenting him in an entirely positive or negative light or, compromising between the two and showing an image that is neither positive nor negative, but neutral. Horn avoids neutrality like the plague, painting a portrait of MacArthur that is at once entirely positive and entirely negative. Strengths and flaws become inseparable, and for once, Douglas MacArthur has come to life.

Far less common in discussions of military commanders is the story of Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, the commander left behind by MacArthur upon his retreat from the Philippines, who courageously but unsuccessfully tried to defend Bataan and Corregidor islands from an oncoming Japanese onslaught. Yet through these pages, he too comes to life, as a far less complex figure than MacArthur—perhaps it is this lack of complexity that made him vulnerable to caricature in the first place—but a figure nonetheless compelling. Loyal and true to his superiors, yet perpetually doubting his moves and struggling through the acceptance of reality and the desire to protect his troops, this is a man to admire, and Horn compels us to admire the alcoholic general who would nearly die in a Japanese POW camp.

Horn brings in the background story of both of these figures, though he spends considerably longer on MacArthur for the simple reason that he had a far longer story to tell. Using quotes from Wainwright’s diary during the war, as well as the correspondence of Douglas MacArthur, his aide Sutherland, the loyal Lew Beebe, George C. Marshall, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, this book is meticulously researched and wonderfully written. At times it is necessary to stop and contemplate the sheer beauty of the writing, despite the ugliness of the situation which it describes. Here is one example:

“They had feared the coming of the rainy season on Bataan, and now it found them midway up Luzon’s central plain, in the town of Tarlac. They had dreamed of taking showers on Corregidor, and now they struggled to keep their bunks dry. They had cursed the dust blinding their eyes, and now they saw mud and mildew everywhere. They had lain awake through bombardments, and now they tried to sleep through thunder…”

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, Horn makes this story center on the sacrifice of Jonathan Wainwright. It may appear that Horn’s purpose is to put MacArthur down; certainly, that is how some have interpreted this work, but I do not think that this is the purpose of the work, or how it should be read. Rather, Horn does not make the reader admire Wainwright and despise MacArthur, but love MacArthur because of Wainwright. Without the latter’s sacrifice, the former’s triumph would have been impossible. Without the former’s triumph, the story of the latter would never have been told. In a strange way, Wainwright completes the picture of MacArthur that we have always wanted but never had. It is by showing MacArthur’s faults that Horn has shown his greatest strength. Through the sacrifice of one, the victory of the other, and the courage of both, the nation as a whole could emerge from what Winston Churchill called its darkest hour, not unscathed, but undefeated, not as angels, but as men whose actions showed the world clearly the better angels of our nature.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

April 29th, 2026

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard

Every great man must have a formative experience that made him great. Nearly all great men are formed in some sort of conflict, a conflict that informs both their character, personality, and outlook on life. Abraham Lincoln would not today be remembered were it not for the Civil War; without the French Revolution, history would not have produced Napoleon Bonaparte; and without the Boer War, claims Candice Millard, Winston Churchill would never have become the guiding force and moral leader of Western civilization during the crucial years of World War II.

This conflict is not often remembered as a war that would make or break an empire. Certainly, although by the end of it the geographical redistribution and proportions of South Africa would have changed significantly, the geopolitical effects would be virtually null. For those outside of Great Britain and the Dutch-controlled African colonies, the Boer War, though perhaps a topic for conversation at the time, would quickly fade away and recede into distant memory, especially with the onset of World War I barely a decade after its conclusion. Yet for young Winston Churchill, the Boer War would prove to be the path to engraving his name on history. “History will remember me,” he wrote, “for I intend to write it.” During this war, he did write it, first as a reporter, then as a participant whose fate was anxiously watched by both the Boer settlers and the British aristocracy.

Candice Millard brings her characteristic clarity to the forefront of this narrative. Clearly, she has deeply researched both the South African landscape and the characters who make their appearances throughout this storyline, for both come alive in the pages of this book. Her key strength lies in her ability to make the story feel real; you, I, each one of us who reads this book becomes a player, a character whose fortune lies intertwined with that of Churchill. With hindsight in our possession, we can cringe each time that Churchill comes within inches of death; we can laugh every time he makes a prediction about the survival of the empire he so loved; we can cry as he cried for lost opportunities; and we can sweat under the South African sun, even as he sweated, all from the comfort of our living room couch.

Beginning with several previous occasions on which Churchill’s courage was tested, including at the Battle of Omdurman, when British forces under General Herbert Kitchener crushed the Mahdist forces, Millard introduces us to this young, dashing man of famous lineage, confident in his own ability to a degree that he constantly risked his life. Was the physical bravery he showed simply the product of courage, or was it a naïve belief in himself and a disregard for his own safety? Perhaps it was both. Whatever the case, Winston Churchill pressed his luck time and again, daring, as it were, destiny to do something about it. Each time he emerged the victor, and each time he showed the watching world that he was a Churchill, and that a Churchill had to be reckoned with.

There is, however, a tension in Millard’s narrative that invites critique. While her even-handed treatment lends credibility, it occasionally drifts into moral neutrality where moral clarity might have strengthened the work. Conflict, after all, is not merely a stage upon which character is displayed; it is also a test of principles. To portray both sides vividly is commendable, but to refrain from deeper judgment risks flattening the very stakes that give such conflicts their enduring significance. On the other hand, another of her strengths is her ability to bring the culture of the Boers to life. Instead of straw-manning the Boers, as Churchill and many others did at the beginning but later came to regret, Millard paints a convincing picture of independent, individualistic, yet deeply devoted Christians seeking to defend their homeland. Unlike a standing army, it was the duty of every man over the age of fifteen to participate actively in the conflict, to do his duty and protect his culture—and what a culture it was. We see Churchill through the eyes of the daring Boer leader Louis Botha, through those of the man who would eventually lead South Africa during World War II and become Churchill’s close friend, Jan Smuts, and through the eyes of the…

In the end, Churchill would escape, and his daring escape made him perhaps wiser, certainly more equipped to deal with the problems of the next half-century. When history called, as at last it would, Winston Churchill would not be standing idle; he would be walking, hand in hand with destiny.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

April 28th, 2026

Founder's Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump by Arthur Herman

They go by many names: entrepreneurs, leaders, thinkers, politicians, business moguls, or military commanders; their names litter our history books, their accomplishments are taught in every classroom that still values the true history of the American experiment. Is it possible that there is a thread connecting them all, one which can explain why those who failed failed, and why those who succeeded were able to succeed? Was success inherent to the leaders’ view of the world, in the case of those whom we now view favorably, and failure inherent in the view taken by those whom our modern eyes regard with scorn? Arthur Herman, noted historian and Pulitzer finalist, believes so.

Herman’s style is easy to engage with and understand. In other books, and in this one as well, he neither inundates the reader with facts nor devotes the entire conversation to abstract lessons, but, through a masterful combination of both, succeeds in doing that which a historian, if he is a good one, must always do: make history come alive to the reader. His sources are mostly well-documented, though there are a few errors which tend to distract from the overall experience and reduce the aesthetics of the narrative. That said, Herman has a clear thesis, which he does not change throughout the book. Sometimes, I must admit, it is difficult to understand the relevance of a certain fact to the overall thesis; perhaps it is there by design, to give a more balanced view, or perhaps it is simply there to add narrative depth, but it distracts and dilates the actual theme in a way which can become, at times, annoying.

The central claim of the book is that, in American history, those lives which are remembered for greatness are remembered precisely because of what Herman calls the “founder’s fire.” This is certainly not a political label, nor one meant to divide down party lines or even socioeconomic spectrums. In contrast to those who have a creative genius—a fire that pushes them to break the status quo, to strive for greater, newer horizons—is the managerial class; those who take over in the absence of the founder’s fire. Indeed, Herman’s claim revolves around the fact that the one leads to the other; a founder who has a vision then begins a company, or a party, or a form of government which breaks all expectations; those who come after him—or her—become preoccupied not with finding a new vision to attain, but rather with conserving the older vision. There is nothing inherently wrong with conserving the old, and this highlights a potential crisis point for Herman’s thesis, for he is a classical conservative who distrusts the progressive elite. Yet the problem, according to the author, is not in attempting to conserve the old for the sake of the old, but in attempting to conserve the old for the sake of conserving the old; in other words, the vehicle for success becomes the measure thereof, ending in a vicious cycle which can only, and has only, been broken by a new type of founder.

Herman has strong words for leaders of both parties, and leaders in all areas: economic, political, and military. Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy, who supervised the Vietnam War, comes under scrutiny, with Herman claiming that McNamara, despite his expertise in the industrial field, was too focused on numbers and figures and neglected the duty of the creative founder in boldly asserting his vision and mission to the task at hand. Also receiving much criticism is the erratic but still enormously successful businessman Henry Ford, whose anti-Semitic views likely precipitated the decline of his standing in the world of both business and geopolitics.

On the other hand, the story which he tells is the prototypical American story, beginning with the founders of the new nation and including oft-overlooked moments of American history which were both uncommon and determinative, such as the Patent Act. Herman then moves on to argue that the failure of the pre-Civil War leadership was in forgetting the actual vision of the American founding. It was Lincoln, with his founder’s fire, who reignited that fire and drove America to surpass previously unsurpassable limits. The story then continues with the managerial class taking over from Lincoln, embroiled in corruption and mired in economic decline; the answer was found in the captains of industry, who were at once hailed as philanthropic messiahs and Gilded Age villains. People such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt figure prominently in the narrative, as do Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and later, Henry Ford.

Herman does not conclude with the period at which most historians will typically end, that is, with the end of the Cold War. He seems not to care that the current political and economic arena is fraught with controversy, arguing that it has always been so and always will be; indeed, he uses modern proofs, such as the pro-tariff and, according to his own political views, pro-American administration of Donald Trump, as well as the remarkable progress made by people like Elon Musk in getting America closer to a landing on Mars, something unthinkable only a generation ago. Perhaps the weakest point in his narrative is the fact that he uses modern examples to prove the thesis, rather than the thesis to prove the examples. In the earlier periods of American history, this is good—admirable even—but once we enter a more controversial era, it can seem, at times, as if Herman is inviting patriotic fervor or political alliances rather than well-reasoned argumentation.

At a deeper philosophical level, one of the areas in which I see potential harm from Herman’s thesis is that he fails to distinguish between different types of progress, even while critiquing progressive politics. As an example, to prove his thesis, he uses competing personalities with competing agendas and competing worldviews to prove one central point: Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, or Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump; they are all on the side of America because they are pushing America forward. Herman fails to convincingly answer the question: is forward the way we want to go?

The author concludes the narrative with the inspiring example of Charlie Kirk; perhaps this too may be controversial, yet his tragic death at the hand of an assassin’s bullet is clearly something that has caused many people to reconsider Kirk’s mission and lasting impact, and something which, regardless of political persuasion, we can all unequivocally condemn and wholeheartedly recognize Kirk as an extraordinary American. This is Herman at his best: calling the nation to a brighter future, a better tomorrow, a tomorrow where the founder’s torch, the fire of our heroes, lights the path ahead.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 21st, 2026

National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America by Michael Auslin

Why is it that today’s shepherds know little about sheep?

In this book, pastor and author James Collins takes our contemporary interpretations of Psalm 23 and sweeps them into the dustbin, then carefully crafts a new, and I would argue more radical, approach to how we should truly approach such a significant biblical passage.

Setting it in its context within the book of the Psalms, Collins reminds us that it is placed between two Messianic psalms. Certainly, David did not know who he was writing of when he spoke of the Shepherd, for it was indeed the Lord—but it was a specific Lord: the Lord Jesus, who had not yet been revealed in full when David wrote the now-famous words.

Moving beyond mere platitudes, Collins’ genius lies in his ability to combine deep theological lessons with Southern wit and personal experiences, without getting the reader lost either in the theological definitions of so many other works on theological matters or in making light of the things of God. In reality, when you read this book, a theological treatise is exactly what you are reading, yet you may well deny it, for it feels more like you are reading the reminiscences of a Southern preacher—which, in a way, you are.

Not only does Collins include everyday experiences and stories that impart rich practical meaning, but he also includes many symbolic details of which Christians today are woefully ignorant. It is easy to conclude, from reading this, that the author did massive research into the symbology behind the Lord as a shepherd, and he writes in this book of the many parallels between the needs of sheep and the tasks of the shepherd, in contrast to the needs of humans as sheep who need a master, and the tasks performed by the Shepherd and Master. Remarkably, the symbolism is neither stretched nor overdone, and the images portrayed do not go further than an explicitly biblical and orthodox interpretation.

That said, at times the book can feel overly simplified. This is by no means a fatal flaw, nor even an unexpected one given Collins’ pastoral aim, but it does raise the question of whether clarity has occasionally been purchased at the expense of depth. While the avoidance of dense theological terminology makes the work accessible, there are moments when the reader may wish for a more rigorous engagement with the underlying doctrinal issues that the text inevitably invites. Thus, my recommendation is simple: if you wish to move beyond the platitudes of normality, then this is the ideal book. If you wish to move into the profundity of theology, then this is not it. The purpose of this book is not to educate the educated, but, as I perceive it, to call the uneducated to a fuller and more accurate understanding of the truth claims of Christianity.

Collins does not offer a theological tower, but he reminds us of the base upon which such a tower must inevitably be built. It is a call for each of us to remember that only when we recognize that we are sheep can we recognize who our Shepherd is.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 12th, 2026

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

A man condemned to die by the bullet of an assassin—or by the scalpel of a doctor. Such is the question posed in this new, groundbreaking work on one of the lesser-known tragedies in American history, one which, nonetheless, had a profound influence on the direction which the nation would take. It is easy for us to remember the stories of John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre at the end of the Civil War, for we grew up hearing the tragic story of Lincoln’s assassination. The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president and the youngest to be elected, also very much remains with us, for there are many individuals who can still remember the terrible scene from Dallas. Even the assassination of William McKinley, shot down at a Buffalo exposition by an anarchist, an event which enabled McKinley’s forty-two-year-old Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, to ascend to the presidency, is part of the social imaginary, certainly more than the story which author and historian Candice Millard undertakes to tell: that of the assassination of James A. Garfield, killed less than twenty years after Lincoln and almost twenty years to the date before McKinley.

First, let me say that I had previously watched the documentary Murder of a President, which is loosely based on this book. Thus, the details herein were by no means shocking to me, as they may be to someone who is unfamiliar with the story of Garfield and his assassin. Yet that is not to imply that I was well acquainted with the more obscure details of this drama, details which Millard captures with near perfection in their historical context, while not forgetting the larger picture. For me, then, this book may have been a bit redundant; yet, remarkably, it was not, and that is something which I am obliged to recognize as the author’s unique talent.

Millard understands that, to understand the fullness of the tragedy, it is also necessary to understand the character of the man who was murdered. James Garfield was not your typical politician. He was a self-made man, a man who had taken job after job to achieve his dream of going to college. He was a hero in the military as well, having served in the Civil War. Finally, he was both a family man and a man of a deep and abiding faith in God. Having gone to the 1880 Republican Convention in order to nominate Senator John Sherman, Garfield, following a deadlocked race between James G. Blaine and former President Ulysses S. Grant—Sherman was not even a notable contender—rose to give a speech on behalf of his fellow Ohioan, and instead found himself being nominated as the dark horse compromise candidate between the Stalwart Grant supporters and the more reform-minded Blaine advocates.

This unlikely story had an unlikely and tragic ending, as the title of the book well shows; yet Millard also goes on to illustrate how, in his few months in office, James Garfield was far from mediocre. Rather, as a talented individual who loved his country and desired to do everything in his power to help her, it would be this determination to remain, as always, an honest man—a man of the people—which would incite the horrific act of violence that would end with his death.

Through these pages, Millard brings to life the character and personality of Garfield, as well as of other principal players: James G. Blaine, the main contender for the presidency in 1880, appointed by Garfield as Secretary of State, still has his eyes on the presidency, and yet is increasingly loyal to Garfield. Roscoe Conkling, the New York Senator renowned for his womanizing and corrupt backroom deals, is determined to bring Blaine down and is willing to do anything in his power, including political suicide, to do so. Finally, the deranged lunatic Charles J. Guiteau, having lived his entire life convinced that he was created by God for a higher purpose, and believing, incorrectly, that his purpose was to secure the election of James Garfield, soon came to believe that he had been denied his just reward for the part he played in the election.

As chilling as it is absurd, this is the story of how Charles J. Guiteau, who had spent years in the cultish orbit of the Oneida Community, came to believe that his mission to assassinate the President of the United States was not only necessary but divinely commanded. Thus, on a summer morning in 1881, at the junction of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroads, the bullets which were fired would bring the nation to a standstill.

Even so, it was not these bullets which would spell doom for the injured President. This, and not the moments leading to the assassination, is where the drama truly begins to unfold, as Alexander Graham Bell, the world-renowned inventor of the telephone, struggles feverishly to invent a metal detector capable of finding the bullet inside Garfield’s system. Charles J. Guiteau, still deranged, is captured, yet unrepentant, and believes that he will soon be hailed as the hero, just as Booth did with Lincoln. Chester A. Arthur, the puppet of Conkling selected by the Republican Party as Garfield’s Vice President, is terrified that Garfield will die and send him to the pinnacle of power, and is torn between his allegiance to Conkling and his conscience. Finally, Doctor Willard Bliss, the doctor who attended Lincoln and who has now decided that he, and he alone, will save the new President’s life, yet still refuses to believe the scientific discovery of colleague Joseph Lister, which has the potential to save Garfield’s life.

The genius of the story is in making the characters come to life and then killing them. The personalities, the thoughts, and the actions are meticulously explained without losing sight of the larger picture. Millard does an expert job in weaving it all together into one central narrative thrust, all the while conserving the separate plot lines without confusing the reader. Easy to read, easy to enjoy, this is one of the greatest modern works in the field of American history, and certainly, it is the authoritative account on the life and the death of this unknown American hero.

First Principles: What America's Founding Fathers Learned From the Greeks and Romans and How that Shaped Our Country by Thomas E. Ricks

Is it possible to remake the founders in the image of progressive liberalism? In this book, purportedly focusing on the Greeks and the Romans but using almost any excuse to move away from the actual influence of the former to illustrate examples of the founders as modern-day, anti-populist progressives focused on social welfare, author Thomas E. Ricks attempts to recast the debate of constitutionalism versus progressivism as a debate between constitutionalist progressivism and populist conservatism.

Although the author is talented and clearly understands the Greco-Roman world deeply, and although his writing style is both clear, informative, and intriguing, the opinions which he presents as facts make this book both unreliable and intellectually frustrating. He discounts, as an example, any religious influence on the founders, presenting them as thoroughly secular deists skeptical of organized religion and worshipping instead the goddess of what he labels “virtue,” as seen in the Greco-Roman world. To be clear, there is nothing wrong, per se, with his representation of the civilization of antiquity. His descriptions of Cicero, Cato, and Cincinnatus are enlightening; the problem is when he makes the startling claim not that these figures played a role in the lives of the Founders, but that nothing else did. Straining against the historical narrative, Ricks recasts the revolutionary period not as a conflict between monarchical belief and natural rights, which indeed it was, but rather as a conflict between the force of progress, which he paints in an almost Hegelian way, and the populist frenzy which he claims dominated the next century, in contrast to the founders’ desires.

Furthermore, interspersed within the narrative is a social commentary on today’s political arena which makes unsubstantiated claims, such as the assertion that white supremacy is both alive and thriving, and the claim that the current presidency of Donald Trump is comparable to the treason of Aaron Burr and something which the founders, although providing for it, would have dreaded. Also adding his personal opinion that the welfare state would have been wholeheartedly endorsed by the Founding Fathers, he makes claims about their perceptions of morality, such as asserting that they supported homosexuality and that it was only later, with the advent of religious fervor in the nineteenth century, that this came to bear a moral stigma, a claim which ignores both the religious context of the founders and the actions of the government of the time.

The richness of the Founders’ moral, philosophical, and theological influences—including the pervasive role of Protestant Christianity, Enlightenment notions of natural law, and classical republican ideals—is flattened into a single narrative of secular virtue and administrative foresight. This book illuminates the past only insofar as it is bent to mold the present; it is accurate only insofar as it can be contorted to fit the author’s preconceived worldview. While Ricks certainly quotes scholarly authorities such as Gordon Wood and Arthur Herman, giving a rich intellectual background to the founders in that they were influenced by both Scottish realism and English empiricism—though, interestingly, not English constitutionalism—Ricks quotes the founders themselves only selectively, refusing to even consider any religious or ethical considerations beyond an abstract Greek sense of virtuous living, something which, incredibly, Ricks pairs with Epicurean pleasure.

Ultimately, while informative, this book fails to achieve the mark of a serious critique or elaboration on the lives and ideas of the founding generation. The author, at the outset, has an evident bias against certain founders, such as Adams, and ignores potential critiques, circumventing them with quotes taken out of context. Additionally, although bias is an irreducible part of human nature, the excessive use of modern examples to illustrate past problems is both distracting and untrustworthy. It saddens me not to be able to give this book approved status, yet the central claims invalidate the benefits that the reader may obtain from a purely informative viewpoint.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 29th, 2026

Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barret Travis by William C. Davis

A famous battle surrounded in myth—what truly remains when legend is stripped away?

For a book to be eight hundred pages long, it must inevitably cover a topic for which there is a wealth of information. Regarding the Alamo and the lives and fortunes of the three men whose lives ended at that historic siege, there is indeed an abundance of material; the problem lies in the fact that much of it is false. Historian William C. Davis does an excellent job of dissecting truth from falsehood and history from myth, carefully tracing the available information on these three men while remaining clear of the dangerous shore of deification into which popular media has so often drifted. In doing so, Davis strips away the romanticized versions of these men, who, far from flawless, exhibited many transient weaknesses and moral failings.

From the son of a tavern owner in Tennessee, to the backwoods adventurer, to the congressional manipulator and naïve legislator, Davis presents a compelling portrait of the most famous of the three: Davy of the wild frontier. Prey to his own public image, Crockett becomes both its beneficiary and its victim. Loved by the people, hated by his party, and eventually alienated from both, this complex man flees to Texas, like the other two, as a means of escaping the consequences of his political and personal failures.

Then there is “Big Jim” Bowie, whom tradition credits with inventing the Bowie knife, though this honor properly belongs to his brother, Rezin. From fraudulent land dealer and slave trader, to collaborator with the pirate Jean Lafitte, to a man of explosive temper and a readiness to fight and kill, James Bowie’s ambition and moral flexibility ultimately propelled him to San Antonio, Texas. His reckless pursuit of wealth, whether in rumored gold or contested land, coupled with his personal sense of moral rectitude and genuine desire to defend the innocent, renders him a hero of a deeply flawed sort.

Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, there is William Barrett Travis, alone among the three to be largely forgotten by the annals of history. The son of a minister, Travis emerges as a man driven by an intense desire to make a name for himself, an ambition he pursued repeatedly and unsuccessfully before heading west to Texas. A man marked by serious moral failings, including the abandonment of his wife and children, womanizing, and slaveholding, Travis was nevertheless acutely aware of his own shortcomings and continually sought redemption. A devout Christian and committed patriot, he had only recently begun to take responsibility for his young son in the months preceding his premature death.

Author William C. Davis, a renowned expert on the antebellum South, frames the story not as a myth of American beauty, nor as a rallying cry for a return to the golden age of patriotism. Nor does he deliver a one-sided attack on the character and lives of these complex men; rather, uncovering all the evidence, and writing on both the good and the bad, Davis shows us the portraits of three human beings, consumed, as most Americans, with a sense of rugged individualism, of willing the impossible and then doing everything in their power to bring the impossible to pass; sometimes succeeding, more often failing, but always, as Theodore Roosevelt said, “in the arena.”

Finally, each man was forced to forge his name in one of the most memorable battles—or massacres—in American history. The fight for Texas Independence started at the Alamo. The lives of William Barrett Travis, David Crockett, and James Bowie ended there—as men who, despite their flaws and overwhelming ambition, died for the defense of what they knew to be right.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 17th, 2026

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

Before the war, there was a war. Returning to another little-known and little-researched period in history, author Erik Larson sheds new light on the time before the start of the Civil War, from the last days of the Buchanan presidency to the surrender of Fort Sumter.

The Demon of Unrest, as The Splendid and the Vile before it, comes alive with a lively array of diverse characters. Robert Anderson, the deeply religious commanding officer in charge of the defense of Fort Sumter, torn between his allegiance to the Union and his bond to the South, is faced with impossible choices that could determine the balance between war and peace. Edmund Ruffin, the fire-eating secessionist who has struggled his entire life to bring this colossal conflict to fruition, is crippled by unbearable personal loss. James Hammond, famous for his declaration that “cotton is King,” treats, rather, the lusts of his flesh as the master of his actions and is nearly ruined by stunning revelations of sexual deviance. Jefferson Davis, the former Secretary of War selected by the Confederacy to be its first leader, is disappointed that a compromise could not be reached, yet bound by honor to remain with his native South. President-elect Abraham Lincoln also makes a prominent appearance in this tale of hubris and heartbreak, as the subtitle describes: recently elected as the first Republican to ever hold the highest office in the land, he is still courting the loyalties of rival factions within his party and the nation. Trying desperately to avoid a breakup of the nation he loves, and for which he is willing to die, the opening shots of a war that will end up claiming his life could not be more trying for the Illinois native.

The intimate and the monumental are captured herein with equal talent. The private doubts, the moral failings and triumphs, and the moments of decision that could hold devastating consequences are all on full display. The anxieties, passions, and contradictions of the men and women caught in the vortex of this period make compromise nearly impossible. Central to the narrative, Larson includes the inseparable sense of honor held by both Northerners, as heirs of the founders, and Southerners, as members of an elite society which goes back even further than the founders the North claims to speak for. The code duello itself, Larson shows, could not describe the opening scenes better, for, like a duel—seconds and all—the prelude to the Civil War was governed by strict rules, personal pride, and the weight of reputation. Yet, as in any duel, misjudgment or hesitation could prove fatal. Every decision carried a dual edge: to act could ignite conflict; to hesitate could invite dishonor.

I have stated in the past how masterfully Larson weaves the story together. This is no exception. If anything, it is an even better example of the talent of a great historian. It is also my habit to criticize elements I dislike in a work—any work—yet, alas, to find such elements in this narrative proves nearly impossible. This book goes to show that history is lived by real people: some will go down in history as men who played a prominent role, while others will be largely forgotten by the annals of history. But these moments of fear, betrayed honor, and heartbreak, as the experiment in democracy seemed to be tearing apart, were lived, to an equal degree, by all; and all, however minor, played a role. Without Fort Sumter, there may well never have been a Civil War. Without The Demon of Unrest, this fort, and the people in it, may never have received their due.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 15th, 2026

The Titans of the Twentieth Century: How They Made History, and the History they Made by Michael Mandelbaum

To make history requires a great man—or an evil one.

In this book, historian and foreign policy scholar Michael Mandelbaum examines eight leaders who shaped the first half of the twentieth century, exploring the lives, accomplishments, legacies, and leadership of Winston S. Churchill, Vladimir Lenin, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Mao Zedong, David Ben-Gurion, and Adolf Hitler. Drawing lessons from the leadership and actions of each of these “great” men, Mandelbaum examines their personalities, governing styles, and paths to power, offering a distinctly personal view of the men behind the public image. After presenting short—if somewhat superficial—biographical sketches of each figure, Mandelbaum analyzes the cultural environments in which they lived, explaining how the three defining events of the early twentieth century—World War I, The Great Depression, and World War II—shaped these men, sometimes for good, but far more often for evil.

Do not let the title deceive you, however, for Mandelbaum does not examine the titans of the entire twentieth century. Figures such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, John F. Kennedy, and Henry Kissinger are conspicuously absent. Instead, the author focuses exclusively on the period between 1900 and 1950. While some of the men discussed—such as Mao Zedong and David Ben-Gurion—remained influential well beyond this timeframe, all of them reached their zenith during these years.

My critique here is not entirely negative. The first half of the twentieth century alone presents a cast of historical figures that has filled thousands of pages and hundreds of books. The fact that Mandelbaum manages to include so many of them within a single volume speaks to his skill as an author. Although I would have appreciated chapters on figures such as Joseph Stalin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Benito Mussolini, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, their absence leaves room for the possibility of a second volume.

The first half of the twentieth century was an era of immense upheaval. Ideologies of both the extreme left and the extreme right competed for supremacy—represented by Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin on one side and Adolf Hitler on the other. The British Empire, which had dominated the previous century and a half, was entering its twilight, while a new global power—envisioned by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt as an “arsenal of democracy”—was rising in its place. Events in the Middle East and Asia brought figures such as David Ben-Gurion and Mahatma Gandhi to the forefront of world politics. Meanwhile, the Great Depression propelled Franklin Roosevelt to power, and World War II ultimately brought about the downfall of Adolf Hitler. During these decades millions perished—under Lenin’s revolution and the later purges of Stalin, under Hitler’s orchestration of the Holocaust, and under Mao Zedong’s brutal rule in China.

While some chapters are stronger than others—particularly those on Churchill, Hitler, and Ben-Gurion—the book as a whole provides valuable insights into the leadership, personalities, and legacies of these influential figures. Most of these leaders—though not all—possessed magnetic personalities capable of inspiring extraordinary loyalty. Such charisma could lead followers into battle or over a precipice. From Wilson’s utopian rhetoric to Hitler’s virulent racial ideology, their ability to inspire and mobilize people helped secure their place as dominant figures of the era.

Furthermore, each of these men possessed a firm ideological conviction. Lenin’s atheistic Marxism led him to establish the first truly socialist state in history, while Churchill’s almost reverential view of the British Empire enabled him to rally the British people to “never give up.” The backgrounds of these figures also profoundly shaped their actions. David Ben-Gurion, for instance, found elements of Marxist rhetoric appealing but ultimately subordinated those ideas to his Zionist convictions—beliefs formed in his Polish homeland.

For serious history enthusiasts, the book may feel somewhat brief and occasionally superficial. Nevertheless, the leadership lessons Mandelbaum draws from these figures remain meaningful. His own perspective is clearly present throughout the work. Coming from a Jewish background, he expresses particular sympathy for Ben-Gurion, while his foreign policy realism leads him to critique Woodrow Wilson’s utopian internationalism. Rather than detracting from the book, these reflections add depth and clarity to the author’s broader argument.

Overall, this is a book well worth reading. Accessible and engaging, it is written not only for readers already familiar with these figures but also for those encountering them for the first time. Though the work contains few explicit references to faith, it ultimately echoes the insight famously articulated by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: that many of society’s greatest tragedies stem from men forgetting God.

Above all, the book reminds us that history is shaped by individuals—flawed and fallen human beings who nevertheless possess the conviction and determination to influence the course of the world, for good or for evil.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 14th, 2026

1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder by Arthur Herman

Idealism is not necessarily a virtue, for both tyrants and heroes have been and are idealists. In 1917, two men, different in many ways but similar in one underlying theme, were about to be catapulted to the forefront of the world. Their choices would be choices that would shape the world for the next century.

Author Arthur Herman argues that both Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States, and Vladimir Lenin, the revolutionary Marxist who would soon be deified as the founder of the Soviet Union, were not only alike in their fervent belief that history could be bent toward a grand design, but also in their confidence that they themselves understood that design. From a distinctly Hegelian lens, one which saw progress as an inevitable force that would lead to harmony, both believed that they could use government, or, in a Bismarckian sense, “the state,” to further their ends. The state was a means to an end for both men, and as a means it was applied in every possible way.

1917 explores how the visions of these two men collided in a colossal way during the terminus of the Great War. Wilson entered the war reluctantly, despite the clamor from those in the Republican Party, such as Theodore Roosevelt, who urged him to stand with their European allies from the start. Yet when he entered, he applied his vision of liberal democracy and an international order to every aspect of the conflict. It would be the mission of the United States Expeditionary Force, under the talented command of “Black Jack” Pershing, to secure a peace, but it would be, Wilson urged, a peace without victory.

Herman argues that that is exactly what he got.

On the other hand was the Russian exile living in Switzerland, the avowed Marxist Vladimir Lenin. Unlike today’s perception of Lenin as a fundamentally different man from his successor, Joseph Stalin, Herman points out that it was Lenin, and not Stalin, who was in command of the purges following the Bolsheviks’ triumph in the Revolution of ’17. It was Lenin, though this applied as well to Stalin or to Stalin’s nemesis Trotsky, who was the brutal warlord who murdered his political opponents, no matter their innocence. Yet Lenin too was an idealist, and Lenin also was willing to use the state to achieve progress. While Wilson viewed progress as that which could be achieved by peaceful coexistence, Lenin saw it in starkly different terms. Well might Mao Zedong’s motto, “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” have served as the unofficial motto of Vladimir Lenin’s revolution. Where Woodrow Wilson spoke the language of diplomacy, congresses, and international law, Lenin spoke the language of force, class war, and revolutionary necessity. Yet both men believed they were accelerating the march of history. The difference lay not in their certainty, but in the methods which they believed history required.

The irony is that Lenin need not have succeeded. The Soviet Union was an experiment, and like all experiments, was not bound to succeed. By its very nature, communism, argues Herman, eats its own creation, and indeed, following the stories of the leaders of the Revolution, such as Trotsky, such a proposition is historically evident as well. Rather than being bound to an inevitable victory of the proletariat, as Lenin firmly believed, the Russian Revolution nearly ended in failure many times. Alexander Kerensky and the fragile Provisional Government might well have crushed the Bolshevik movement had events taken only a slightly different course. The Whites, under the command of Alexander Denikin, could have stood up to Lenin had not inner turmoil and distrust between Denikin and Kerensky bloomed. Indeed, had Woodrow Wilson himself not intervened on behalf of the Bolsheviks, it is likely that the experiment in communism would have ended not in 1991 with the quiet dissolution of the Soviet Union, but in 1919 amid the smoke and confusion of the Russian Civil War. Ironically, it was the Hegelian idealism of Wilson that preserved the Soviet Union from destruction.

Wilson himself would fail, his idealism running aground when the Republican Senate, under the leadership of Henry Cabot Lodge, blocked Wilson’s pet project, the League of Nations. It was idealism that prevented Wilson from acceding to the demands made by the Republican Congress. It was idealism that made Wilson see the entire conflict over the League as a conflict for the future of humanity rather than an opportunity for compromise, which could have led to a fundamentally better League, one backed by both parties. It was idealism that drove Wilson mad with fury and would lead to several massive strokes that would leave him incapacitated for the remainder of his term and that would sink all hopes of running for a third term in 1920.

In clear prose, Herman successfully defends his central thesis: that the idealism of both Wilson and Lenin led to the disorder of the next century. The naivety of Wilson’s Fourteen Points and his belief that World War I was “the war to end all wars” would lead to the appeasement of Nazi Germany. The desperate, Machiavellian, yet at heart idealistic policies of Vladimir Lenin would lead to the deaths not only of Russians during the fifty-plus years of Soviet rule, but would also, albeit indirectly, cause the surge of bloody communist revolutions across the globe, from Mao’s China, where seventy million people died, to Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Kim’s North Korea. Although Herman makes no attempt to disguise his contempt for Wilson, and his hatred of Lenin, from beginning to end, the facts are neatly ordered, the thesis is well defended, and the writing is masterfully articulated.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 8th, 2026

The Death of Trotsky by Josh Ireland

Not only does a fight exist in our world between good and evil; a fight also exists between evil men and men who are even more evil. This book is the story of one such conflict. In The Death of Trotsky, author Josh Ireland showcases one of the most consequential fights in recent history. Each side claimed that progress was on its side; each side claimed to fight for the working man, for the proletariat, for the oppressed; and each claimed that the other was an enemy of progress, an enemy of the proletariat and of society itself.

In an exhilarating ride, Ireland lives up to the description of his book. It does, indeed, rival the works of Erik Larson and Ben Macintyre. Starting with the critical months following the death of the brutal Vladimir Lenin, Ireland narrates the struggle for control of the Soviet legislature and for control of the communist movement as a whole. Two men, both of whom had fought side by side during the bloody months of 1917, both of whom were fundamental pieces of the first successful Marxist revolution in world history, and both of whom claimed themselves, and not the other, to be the logical and only safe choice to succeed the deified Lenin.

Ultimately, the brutal Joseph Stalin would emerge the victor, leading to the exile and eventual assassination of his equally brutal opponent, Leon Trotsky. Ireland excels in telling the stories not only of these two men, but also of the others who were both the victors and the victims of the revolution that these two men had brought into being. The book follows the story of the Spaniard Ramon Mercader and his mother, who had fought alongside Soviet sympathizers in the Spanish Civil War and were then recruited by the NKVD to take part in the hunt for and death of the greatest foe to Stalin’s consolidation of power. It is a tale full of deceit, of double lives, of tragic ends; a tale of darkness and the worst kind of evil that can fill the human heart.

The book also follows the story of Marc “Etienne” Zborowski, who quickly rose through the ranks of Trotskyists in Paris, becoming the heir apparent following the death of Trotsky’s only surviving son, Lev (under suspicious circumstances), though he was on Stalin’s payroll. Finally, it follows the story of Leon Trotsky himself: exiled, knowing that Stalin’s agents would eventually catch up to him, yet unrepentant, perpetually convinced that he was the true force of revolution, the true arm of progress.

The book deals with some heavy topics. It is a book without hope, without redemption, without a theme other than despair, but it is a vital read to understand the heart of darkness, as Conrad termed it. Ireland does not conceal the evil behind either Stalin and his NKVD agents or the perversion of Trotsky and his Mexican allies Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The book spends considerable time discussing the critical years of Stalin’s purge, when everyone who had even been remotely connected to Trotsky was disposed of, and all those who had too clean a record—as in, they had no known connections to Trotsky—also faced the pistol for “security concerns.”

From Moscow to Paris, from Norway to the outskirts of Mexico City, Leon Trotsky was a hunted man, and he knew it. Yet on that warm day in 1940, it would be the choices of one man, and one man alone, that would determine the destiny of this communist leader. This is the story of choices, both good and bad. It is the story of ideas, bad and worse. It is the story of a murder: the murderer and the murdered.

Though the outcome of the story was certain from the beginning—the title is, of course, an obvious spoiler—this book was nonetheless spellbinding. The narrative was easy to follow, though, at times, the names were not; it was hard to keep track of all the communists and Trotskyists in the who’s who of double agents. It was easy to sympathize with the exiled Trotsky. It was also hard to determine the author’s personal political agenda; his sympathy for Trotsky does not altogether convince me that he is a Trotskyist, though he certainly does not spare additional verbiage regarding Stalin.

The ideological framework and differences of the two men are also hard to determine. At root, however, I think this is not as much the fault of the author as it is the fact that the two revolutionaries were extraordinarily close to each other in purpose and in outlook: an atheistic Marxist belief in Hegelian progress. This leads me to the conclusion that neither Stalin nor Trotsky was a friend of the common man; both were, ultimately, concerned only with their will to power, as Hitler in Germany, Tito in Yugoslavia, Mussolini in Italy, and Mao in China all were.

And it was this will for power that would lead to the demise of Leon Trotsky, abandoned by nearly all; killed in the most merciless way imaginable, alone, defenseless, long since exiled from his native land, in a Mexico City house, betrayed by one of his few remaining allies.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

A Time to Betray by Reza Kahlili

There is a time for all things under heaven, including, as it turns out, A Time to Betray. Written by an Iranian student who was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency to gather information on the activities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Reza Kahlili — the author uses a pen name to protect his identity — discusses the issues at the heart of the human soul: the urge to remain loyal to one’s own country, to protect innocent family members, yet the revulsion produced in the soul in the face of sheer evil.

Having read numerous works of fiction on the Iranian Revolution, CIA activities in the region, and the apocalyptic worldview that drives the Muslim regime, I was quite intrigued when I first learned of the author and the book’s thesis.

Certainly, the author’s perspective is very interesting. He approaches the IRGC from a very westernized perspective (he spent several years at UC Berkeley), and the reader is left constantly guessing what his current religious convictions are. He is constantly praying to “God,” but he gives no hint as to which god that is. At one point it becomes very clear that he has left Islam, or at least that he has left radical Islam. There are, unfortunately, no redemptive virtues in the narrator’s life that give any indication of a conversion to Christianity; yet the role of Providence remains an irreducible part of the narrator’s life story, as he comes to terms with good and evil in his own homeland and is faced with unthinkable choices.

The narrative is interesting from both a cultural and psychological perspective, and learning about what truly goes on in the echelons of power in Tehran is fascinating. Further, the author explains the mindset of the radical, apocalyptic jihadists and does not sugarcoat it. Sadly, it does not read like a novel or a spy book, so if that is what you are expecting, you will be disappointed. The author is not a writer by training; English is not his native tongue, and it is immediately obvious. Although the style can at times become annoying, and the constant shifts in time — avoiding nearly all chronological order or sense of location — distract the reader from the core of the matter, this remains an essential read for understanding both the mindset of those who were in power until recently and the mindset of those who have been persecuted by this deadly regime for well-nigh half a century.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

Erik Larson is a pleasure to read. This is not the big, multi-volume, extremely interesting but also somewhat dry biography of Churchill by Martin Gilbert. Rather, it is a work of historical narrative told through the eyes of Churchill and those closest to him, and it reads like a thriller. Beginning on the day of Churchill’s ascent to the premiership following the resignation of appeaser Neville Chamberlain, The Splendid and the Vile moves through the critical days after the fall of France, the evacuation of Dunkirk, and the crucial decision to sink the French naval fleet, taken by Churchill out of fear that it would be handed over to Germany by Vichy France. The Splendid and the Vile will, no doubt, remain a portrayal of the Blitz that lingers in dining rooms and on bookshelves as a showpiece for years to come. It is a fundamentally necessary read, but, unlike many other necessary works, it is a book that will hook the reader from start to finish. Larson weaves together stories and inner plots that support his central thesis, sometimes working backward from a set point of “meeting” to consider the events leading up to it. He does take some historical liberties that a more cautious historian might avoid; that said, nothing in the narrative is explicitly inaccurate. The theme, the setting, and the thoughts, motives, and personalities of the principals all come into play and stand at the forefront of this story of prolonged conflict.

The book also tells the stories of everyday Londoners during the weeks, months, and years of the Blitz. From the tragic suicide of Virginia Woolf to the bombing of the Café de Paris, Larson brings a level of human interest rarely seen in biographies of public figures. There is also, of course, Churchill’s vital personality: his often brutal sense of humor, his occasional childlike innocence, and at other times his vengeful distrust. Larson explores his relationship with the intrigue-filled Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, who, despite resigning fourteen times, always seemed to remain in Churchill’s cabinet and who almost single-handedly increased Britain’s wartime aircraft production, arguably saving the nation from the fate chosen for so many other European states: becoming a vassal of Nazi Germany. Then there was “the Prof,” Frederick Lindemann, the eccentric Jewish physicist whose inventions drove most men to distraction but whose remarkably affable relationship with Churchill remains one of the book’s curiosities. Finally, there is the Prime Minister’s family: the unhappy couple, Randolph Churchill and Pamela Harriman—Randolph a hopeless drunk and womanizer, Pamela a lonely socialite navigating a marriage that had curdled almost as soon as it began, finding companionship and influence in the drawing rooms and bedrooms of powerful men such as W. Averell Harriman, FDR’s envoy to London. Mary Churchill, all of eighteen, was unsure where her future lay but certain of her love for her father, while Clementine Churchill, despite the sexual deviance common among the upper aristocracy, remained remarkably faithful to her devoted husband Winston and restrained him from some of his greatest mistakes.

It is also, fundamentally, a story of alliances. Larson traces Churchill’s efforts to persuade the United States to pass the Lend-Lease bill, as well as the events leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor, after which Churchill believed the world had been saved. The book also considers alliances within the Third Reich: between the Führer and his air-power genius, the art thief yet devoted husband Hermann Göring; Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister so devoted to his Führer that he would later poison himself, his wife, and their six children; and Rudolf Hess, the unstable deputy who believed he had received a vision instructing him to orchestrate a peace with Britain.

Last but not least, it is a story of bravery: from the rhetorical power of Winston Churchill (“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat”), to the bomber crews, and to the British people themselves, determined to fight on the beaches and on the landing grounds, in the air and on the sea. Larson captures a nation standing on the brink and refusing to step back, and in doing so reminds the reader why those months were not only pivotal for the future of Britain but foundational for the future of civilization.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 7th, 2026

The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin

The Gilded Age has long been fraught with controversy, from the actions of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil to the trust-busting of Theodore Roosevelt and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Both sides of the political spectrum have a special interest in this period of American history. It was, depending on perspective, an age of greed or an age of enormous technological progress; a period during which the robber barons reigned supreme, or an age when the captains of industry generated thousands of jobs and fueled the economic boom that would send America to the forefront of world geopolitics and economics within a matter of decades.

Now, Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Team of Rivals, dedicates her talent and her pen to this age, and to two figures who were dominant not only in politics, but also in economics. In an intriguing and fascinatingly told tale involving the friendship and rivalry of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Goodwin weaves into the narrative the questions of the day: is, as the social Darwinists and conservatives believed, the role of government limited by time and space, or is it to play an active, and, in the hands of Roosevelt, incredibly active role in asserting the rights of labor and protecting the interests of the worker? From McClure’s periodical, where Ida Tarbell and her team of “muckrakers,” as Roosevelt, in a fit of anger, would describe them, labored tirelessly to expose what they perceived as injustice on the part of capitalist businessmen and financiers, to the halls of Congress, where Goodwin portrays the group she labels as the “conservatives” as both enemies of the people and, in her view, defenders of the status quo; in short, as corrupt career politicians dedicated to preserving their own livelihoods.

In terms of style, Goodwin has delivered another masterpiece. The characters, personalities, and foibles of both Theodore Roosevelt — the passionate, temperamental, and extremely dedicated former colonel and outdoorsman — and William Taft, in personality his opposite, though in mental fortitude, if not in dedication, his equal, come alive in this narrative. From Roosevelt’s appointment as Vice President and Taft’s tenure as Governor-General of the Philippines, to Roosevelt’s presidency and his nomination of Taft as his successor, Goodwin captures the excitement of the moment, as a team of talented, if biased, journalists set to work to expose the rich and wealthy in what some may call a personal vendetta — in the case of Tarbell — or an ideological obsession — in the case of Lincoln Steffens.

Leading up to the break between the former president and the sitting president, as tensions increased, the issues of the day came to the forefront. With Taft’s catastrophic, though arguably necessary, firing of Roosevelt’s top ally, Gifford Pinchot, the two men came head to head, and both used the power of the bully pulpit to its fullest, ultimately leading to the election of 1912, in which Theodore Roosevelt, wounded after a bullet struck him in the chest during an assassination attempt, for the first and only time in history defeated one of the two main party contenders while running as a third-party candidate, coming in second to the Princeton professor Woodrow Wilson. The Progressive Era is very much an era to be remembered and studied, from the populism of Bryan to the labor strikes throughout the nation and the political backrooms of Washington, D.C.

That said, no book should be spared necessary criticism, and this book is no exception. Goodwin, who worked for Lyndon B. Johnson and is a notable critic of conservatism not only in its manifestations of the nineteenth century but also in its current forms, makes no attempt to conceal her disdain for “laissez-faire economics” and clearly takes a view of government as the cure for all ills. Her view of Roosevelt as primarily a progressive candidate opposed to business freedom is not held by all historians; and neither she nor any other historian has the right to monopolize Roosevelt for her own side. Numerous comments made by Roosevelt, Taft, or other close advisors opposing the muckrakers and labor strikers go ignored or underexplained, and while she defends her thesis well and writes it clearly, she does so at the risk of overlooking evidence that does not suit her view. Of course, this is something that many historians, including those on the right, do regularly, and it is a criticism that should apply not only to this author but to all authors when necessary. Her representation of laborers as primarily peaceful or motivated by righteous intentions is an interesting take, one that should be engaged by those on the right as a claim that overlooks the anarchism and socialism of the day, anarchism that would lead to the assassination of William McKinley. The religious aspect is ignored completely. In fact, the only mention the author makes of religion in the entire 900-page book is to state that Taft’s father defended a court ruling declaring that Christianity should have no special place in America. Further, though she does not demonize Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, or other big business executives, her sympathies are clearly not on their side. In short, this is a book you could and should expect from a progressive, pro-government intervention journalist like Goodwin.

So, what then is the verdict? It is, as nearly all matters are, a complex yet simple answer: it should be read; it should be engaged with. The thesis should be understood but not taken at face value. The facts should not be entirely discounted nor entirely accepted, but should be read critically. Above all, a conclusion must be formed. Agree or disagree, this book will make you choose, and that, ultimately, is the one piece of the puzzle remaining, for which I am proud to recommend this book as a necessary piece of American history.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 6th, 2026

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