Books/Livres

This is Aurelian Craiutu’s response to four critics of his Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals. The reviews to which this post is a response can be found over the […]

This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of Aurelian Craiutu’s Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals. Tocqueville 21 Forum on Aurelian Craiutu, Why Not Moderation? Letters […]

This is the third in a series of four reviews of Aurelian Craiutu’s Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals. Tocqueville 21 Forum on Aurelian Craiutu, Why Not Moderation? Letters […]

This is the second in a series of four reviews of Aurelian Craiutu’s Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals. Tocqueville 21 Forum on Aurelian Craiutu, Why Not Moderation? Letters to […]

Today, Tocqueville 21 publishes the first of four reviews of Aurelian Craiutu’s Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals (Cambridge University Press, 2024). The first contribution is by Michael Behrent. In subsequent […]

Review: Wolfram Eilenberger, Shaun Whiteside (translator), The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times (Penguin Press)   The years from 1933 to 1943 constitute among […]

** This is the third of three reviews of Jamie Martin’s The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance. Each day this week one review will be published, and […]

** This is the first of three reviews of Jamie Martin’s The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance. Each day this week one review will be published, and […]

** This is the introduction to a forum comprising three reviews of Jamie Martin’s The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance. Each day this week one review will […]

Robert A. Schneider, The Return of Resentment. The Rise and Decline and Rise Again of a Political Emotion.  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2023. xiii and 297 pp.   […]

Book Review: Stephen Gross, Energy And Power: Germany in the Age of Oil, Atoms, and Climate Change, Oxford University Press, 2023 Image Credit: Oxford University Press   Achieving a new […]

Susan Neiman, Left is Not Woke (Polity Press, 2023) Image Credit: Polity Press   In Left is Not Woke, Susan Neiman wades into the ongoing debate over the concept of […]

** This is James Stafford’s response to our forum on his book The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750-1848.**   By James Stafford I’d like to start, […]

** This is the second in a series of three reviews of James Stafford’s The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750-1848. Each day this week one review […]

** This is the second in a series of three reviews of James Stafford’s The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750-1848. Each day this week one review […]

** This is the first in a series of three reviews of James Stafford’s The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750-1848. Each day this week one review […]

Review: Brooke Barbier, King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father (Harvard University Press, 2023)   American Founder John Hancock sacrificed “his health and wealth” in service of […]

This is a book review of Christine Abely’s The Russia Sanctions: The Economic Response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2024)   When Russia invaded Ukraine […]

Review: Erwin Chemerinsky, Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism (Yale University Press)   In 2010, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving the constitutionality of […]

Review: Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (Mariner Books)    “The world must be made safe for democracy.” That was American president […]

Review: Daniel Chandler, Free and Equal:What Would a Fair Society Look Like? In 1971, John Rawls published A Theory of Justice, a book frequently described as the 20th century’s greatest […]

** This is the fourth post in our Black Dignity and Death forum, focusing on Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination and Norman Ajari’s Dignity Or Death: Ethics […]

** This is the third in our Black Dignity and Death forum, focusing on Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination and Norman Ajari’s Dignity Or Death: Ethics and […]

** This is the second post in our Black Dignity and Death forum, focusing on Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination and Norman Ajari’s Dignity Or Death: Ethics […]

** This is the first post in our Black Dignity and Death forum, focusing on Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination and Norman Ajari’s Dignity Or Death: Ethics […]

This week, Tocqueville 21 is hosting a forum on the topic of Black Dignity and Death, inspired by the recent publications of Vincent Lloyd’s Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination and […]

Review: Louisa Lim, Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong, (Riverhead Books, 2022)   When the United Kingdom turned control of Hong Kong over to the Peoples’ Republic of China […]

Review: Sarah Bakewell, Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope (Chatto & Windus, 2023)   The British writer Sarah Bakewell is a proven master at presenting […]

Review: Michael Walzer, The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On “Liberal” as an Adjective (Yale University Press)   Michael Walzer is among America’s most distinguished political philosophers.  Throughout his long career, […]

Review: Philippe Sands, The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy (Weidenfeld & Nichols, 2022)   Testing Britain’s Commitment to Decolonization and the Rule of Law […]

Review: Martin Wolf, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (Penguin Press, 2023)   Martin Wolf, the veteran chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, lauded by global business folk and a […]

Review: Glory M. Liu, Adam Smith’s America (Princeton University Press, 2022)   Adam Smith was born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, a small market town near Edinburgh. A life-long bachelor, Smith […]

**This is the author’s response in our book forum on Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. This week, we have published four reviews of […]

** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Previous reviews include: 1. When Algeria Was […]

** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Previous reviews include: 1. When Algeria Was […]

**This is the second in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Previous reviews include: 1. When Algeria Was Europe? […]

** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. Each day this week one review […]

Review: Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses (Penguin Random House)   “In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” Thus begins Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses. Six other chapters in this quirky work […]

Review: Martha Jones, Vanguard:  How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (Basic Books)   In their relentless quest for full equality in the United […]

In his famous survey of the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville wondered what effect democratic politics might have on the new nation. Specifically, he worried about democracy’s influence on foreign […]

Review: Michael Sonenscher, ‘Capitalism: The Story behind the Word’, (Princeton University Press, 2022)   Before what we now call ‘capitalism’, there were commercial societies founded upon the division of labour, […]

  Review: Kei Hiruta, Hannah Arendt & Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics, and Humanity  (Princeton University Press)   Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) and Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), two of the 20th century’s most […]

**Last week we published a book forum on Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era, with four reviews of Marker’s book and an […]

**This is the author’s response in our book forum on Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. This week, we have published four […]

**This is the fourth and final review in our forum on Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Previous reviews include: 1.  The […]

**This is the third in a series of four reviews of Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Previous reviews include: 1.  The […]

** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Each day this week […]

** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Emily Marker’s Black France, White Europe” Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. Each day this week […]

Review: David A. Hollinger, Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular (Princeton University Press, 2022) Although it comprises fewer than 200 pages, David A. Hollinger’s […]

Review: Moisé Naím, The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century (St. Martin’s Press)   Less than a week before the recent mid-term elections in […]

** This is the author’s response to a series of four reviews of William Novak’s recently published book New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. 1. The Limitless […]

** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of William Novak’s recently published book New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. 1. The Limitless Possibilities […]

** This is the third in a series of four reviews of William Novak’s recently published book New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. 1. The Limitless Possibilities […]

** Ceci est la deuxième critique du livre New Democracy par William Novak. Elle est la seule en français. Les autres sont rédigées en anglais. This is the second in […]

** This is the first in a series of four reviews of William Novak’s recently published book New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State. Each day this week […]

Review: Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (Pluto Press), and Bénédicte Savoy, Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat, translated […]

A book review of Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris From the Belle Epoque Through Revolution and War (St. Martin’s Press, 2022). Paris is “full of Russians […]

Elizabeth Borgwardt, Christopher McKnight Nichols, and Andrew Preston (eds.), Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2021) Late in the year 1906, a senior official in the British Foreign Office […]

This is a book review of Kati Marton’s The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel (Simon & Schuster, 2021). Many can plausibly claim to have had a hand in […]

This is a book review of Marcel Gauchet’s Robespierre: The Man Who Divides us the Most (Princeton University Press, 2022) The name Robespierre still haunts the memory of the French […]

A review of George Makari’s Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia (W.W. Norton and Company, 2021).   The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “xenophobia” as a “fear and hatred of […]

** The past two weeks, we have published four reviews of Olivier Zunz’s new biography of Alexis de Tocqueville—two in French, two in English—followed by a response by Zunz. The […]

**This is the author’s response to a series of four reviews – two in French and two in English – of Olivier Zunz’s The Man Who Understood Democracy. Last week, we […]

**This is the last of four reviews of Olivier Zunz’s The Man Who Understood Democracy. Last week, we published the first review: “Voyage dans les arcanes de la pensée Tocquevillienne” […]

** Cette recension est la troisième d’une série de quatre critiques de la nouvelle biographie d’Alexis de Tocqueville de l’historien Olivier Zunz. La semaine dernière nous avons publié la recension […]

** This is the second of four reviews of Olivier Zunz’s The Man Who Understood Democracy. Yesterday, we published the first review: “Voyage dans les arcanes de la pensée Tocquevillienne” […]

** Cette recension est la première d’une série de quatre critiques—deux en français, deux en anglais—de la nouvelle biographie de Alexis de Tocqueville de l’historien Olivier Zunz, suivi par la […]

A book review of Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton University Press, 2019.) As World War II ended, European colonial empires of the 19th […]

Raymond Geuss Does Not Think Like a Liberal.   Reading Raymond Geuss’s Philosophy and Real Politics a couple years ago was like a breath of fresh air. Geuss was writing […]

Par Danielle Charette et Atman Mehta. Traduction par Justin Saint-Loubert Bie.   Nous nous sommes entretenus avec Aaron Tugendhaft à propos de son livre, La destruction des idoles : D’Abraham […]

A book review of Paul Sabin’s Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism (W.W. Norton & Co., 2021)   1965 marked the highpoint for […]

  Justin Saint-Loubert-Bie, a former intern for Tocqueville 21, sat down with Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass to discuss their new book, Half-Earth Socialism (Verso: April 2022). In the publication, […]

This is the introduction to our forum on Martin Conway’s new book Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968. 1. Embedded Democracy – Chris Bickerton 2. Comprendre les démocraties européennes après la […]

** This post is Martin Conway’s response to our forum on his new book, Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968.  You can read the previous reviews here:  1. Embedded Democracy – […]

** This is the third in a series of three reviews of Martin Conway’s new book Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968. Conway’s response will be published tomorrow. You can read […]

** This is the second in a series of three reviews of Martin Conway’s new book Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968. 1. Embedded Democracy – Chris Bickerton 3. The Pre-History […]

** This is the first in a series of three reviews of Martin Conway’s new book Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968. 2. Comprendre les démocraties européennes après la Seconde Guerre […]

Review: The Atlantic Realists: Empire and International Thought Between Germany and the United States, by Matthew Specter (Stanford University Press, 2022)   Open any textbook on International Relations today, and […]

A book review of Michael J. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? (Penguin, Allen Lane, 2021). “Those who work hard and play by the rules […]

** This is the author’s response to a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. […]

** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. 1. […]

** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. Each […]

** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. The […]

** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. Each […]

** This is the author’s response to a series of four reviews of her new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]

** This is the fourth and last in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French […]

A book review of James McAuley’s The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France (Yale University Press, 2021). In The House of Fragile Things, Washington […]

** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]

** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]

** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]

A book review of Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020)    In late November of this year, the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) […]

A book review of James Wyllie’s Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler’s Germany (St Martin’s Press, 2019). Within the proliferation of literature on seemingly every aspect of […]

A book review of Noah Feldman’s The Arab Winter: A Tragedy (Princeton University Press, 2020). 2011 was the year of the upheaval known as the ‘Arab Spring,’ a time when […]

A book review of Ann Heberlein’s On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt. Translated from Swedish by Alice Menzies (Pushkin Press, 2021). Before she became a celebrated New […]

James Shapiro, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Our Future (Penguin Press, 2020)   In June 2017, New York City’s Public Theater […]

** Last week, Tocqueville 21 published a book forum consisting of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War followed by […]

** This response from Samuel Moyn completes the Tocqueville 21 forum on his new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Four reviews of Humane, by […]

** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]

** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]

** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Samuel Moyn’s new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Each day this week […]