Paul A. Rahe— It is much easier to initiate a great war than to end one. Even when an attempt to do the latter seems, to the unsuspecting glance, to be an unqualified success, it frequently lays the foundations for a renewal of the struggle. The origins of the Second
Paul A. Rahe— In his now neglected masterpiece Marlborough: His Life and Times, Winston Churchill once hazarded the following observation: Battles are the principal milestones in secular history. Modern opinion resents this uninspiring truth, and historians often treat the decisions in the field as incidents in the dramas of politics
Paul A. Rahe— It has always been hard for outsiders to get their minds around classical Lacedaemon, or Sparta as it is more commonly called today. Even in antiquity—as a glance at Xenophon’s Regime of the Lacedaemonians, at Plato’s Republic and Laws, and at Aristotle’s Politics will make clear—the Spartans
Paul A. Rahe— The study of ancient Greek history in modern times has always been Athenocentric. It could hardly have been otherwise. Much of what was written about Hellas in antiquity was composed by Athenians, and much of the rest was composed principally with the Athenian audience in mind. In
Robin Prior— I want to highlight the dangers to Western civilization if Britain had succumbed to Nazi Germany in 1940. But to do this, first I’ll make the point, illustrated over the course of history, that the side that wins the war does not necessarily represent all that is best
This Monday, the International Criminal Court in The Hague charged the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, with three counts of genocide in Darfur, which is the worst crime in international law. The charges come after a long legal process, during which al-Bashir was reelected for another term as president.
In honor of the Halloween spirit, check out these spooks–I mean books–from Yale University Press. Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality by Paul Barber In this engrossing book, Paul Barber surveys centuries of folklore about vampires and offers the first scientific explanation for the origins of the vampire legends.
Reviewers are finding Ben Kiernan’s newest book, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, to be an engaging look at an important and timely subject. In a review for the October 8th issue of The New Republic, Michael Ignatieff calls Blood and Soil
Labyrinth Books New Haven will host Ben Kiernan on Wednesday, October 10th at 5:30pm to celebrate his recently published Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. This book party and conversation is free and open to the public. For more details and information
Ben Kiernan, author of the recently published book, Blood and Soil, will be speaking this Saturday at 2 pm at the Queens Public Library, Flushing Branch in New York. For more details and information on the event, click here. For a listing of all library events, visit QueensLibrary.org For thirty