God’s Forever Family is a well-organized history of the Jesus People movement in America. Larry Eskridge provides a readable account from the movement’s inception in San Francisco to its outgrowth nationwide. Nearly any city of any size would come to have a Jesus People-inspired coffee house.

The movement began as a hippie-Christian counter to the secular counter-culture, from which many of the hippie-Christians were recent converts. As the movement grew and the secular counter-culture declined, the Jesus People turned inward and became a ministry to evangelical youth. Eskridge is especially good in showing the interaction (and friction in some cases) between the hippie-Christians and their “straight” counterparts within the evangelical church.

Eskridge also shows how the movement declined due to economic hardship in the mid-1970s, leadership struggles, and the participants in the movement getting older and moving into married life. Despite its decline, the movement would have long-term consequences on evangelical church life and secular culture in the form of contemporary worship and the social conservatism of the pro-life movement.

The energy and enthusiasm of the Jesus People, especially their zeal for in-person evangelism, is something the church needs today. This book shows us why.

In Iran: Open Hearts in a Closed Land, Mark Bradley provides a brief overview of the unlikely growth of Christianity in Iran since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Bradley first demonstrates why Iran is primarily closed to Christianity. Despite this, there is an openness to the Christian faith in Iran.

In Iran, the government views Christian evangelism as a detraction from “the glory of Islam.” Hence, Christian literature, unless purely for academic use, can not be published in Persian. Officially, although much of the Iranian public and some government officials oppose it, a Muslim convert to Christianity can face death as a Muslim apostate.

Mixed in with religious opposition to Christianity are non-religious factors. As Christianity is the dominant faith in America, Iran’s revolutionary leaders associate America and its dominant faith with American support of the Shah and his efforts to Westernize Iran. Similarly, there is historic hostility to the traditionally Christian West because of Western efforts to dominate Iran’s oil industry.

For everything stacked against Christianity in Iran, there is arguably more working in its favor. The 1979 revolution established an Islamic government and established “optimism, hope,” and unity. However, the era of good feelings soon turned to “bitter disillusionment” in the face of “war, economic chaos,” and political repression. For some Iranians, disillusionment with Iran’s Islamic government leads to questioning Islam and an openness to other faiths.

The Iranian government permits Christianity within the historic Armenian and Assyrian Christian communities. These Christians “run their own businesses [and] many of their children go to government schools.” Beyond these traditional Christian communities in Iran, there are Protestant churches (such as the Assemblies of God), and “quite a number of Muslims will find their way into services in” Tehran. There, “the international diplomatic presence, and the fact that Tehran is such a massive city” favor Iranians wanting to attend a public church service.

Perhaps the most significant factor in the growth of Christianity in Iran is the “underground church,” or groups of Christians who meet in secret “in thousands of ordinary homes throughout the length and breadth of the country.” These secret Iranian Christians fear the loss of employment or worse by attending a public church service.

Although this is a short book, it is significant in content. It serves as a helpful introduction to recent Iranian history, Shia Islam in Iran, and non-Muslim aspects of Iranian culture. Most importantly, it is an excellent guide to the past and future of Christianity in Iran.

“Mao’s great talent lay in turning the Chinese people into slaves, while making them feel like they were the masters of the country ... All the world’s dictators have studied Mao.”

Julia Lovell’s Maoism: A Global History provides a comprehensive history of the origins and influence of Maoism. It has crossed cultural and language boundaries to be a worldwide phenomenon. Its guiding principle has been a utopian message of liberating the oppressed, while ruthlessly silencing dissent.

Mao’s path to power began in earnest in 1934 with his assumption of the military leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). From this position, Mao was able to wrest political control of the CCP from his rivals. While Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists were fighting the Japanese, membership in the CCP increased “from 40,000 in 1937 to around 800,000 in 1940.”

In 1938, American journalist Edgar Snow published Red Star Over China. Snow was an American living and writing in China. Mao granted Snow a series of interviews, and the CCP carefully vetted Snow’s manuscript. The resulting book was a glowing portrait of Chinese communism and Mao’s leadership. The book was an international bestseller. Outside of Mao’s writings, the book was the most influential source of global Maoism.

Guerrilla warfare was a crucial part of Mao’s military strategy in China and a part of global Maoism. In China, Mao used the approach to avoid direct engagement with Chiang Kai-shek. The strategy was exported to Vietnam and used there to defeat the French and later the Americans. The CCP also benefited from the obfuscation of Mao’s true intentions. In 1945, CCP representative Zhou Enlai convinced visiting Americans that “Mao wanted an American style democracy.”

Once in power in China, Maoism took on a quasi-religious dimension. A visit to China became a spiritual pilgrimage for Maoists. The Little Red Book of quotations by Mao was described by the Chinese Minister of Defense Lin Biao as a “spiritual atom bomb of infinite power.” Between 1966 and 1971, “more than a billion” Little Red Books were printed “in dozens of languages.”

With the onset of the Cultural Revolution in China, Maoism emerged as the radical ideology of choice. Mao condemned Khrushchev’s repudiation of Stalinism as “revisionism.” In contrast to Soviet dilution, Maoism championed the oppressed and opposed all injustice. Mao’s platitudes, such as “serve the people,” “power flows from the barrel of a gun,” and “revolution is not a dinner party,” became popular in the radical West and elsewhere.

With the death of Mao in 1976, the Cultural Revolution came to a close. Deng Xiaoping, who took power in 1978, emphasized Chinese economic development. However, Deng did not entirely repudiate Maoism. Unlike the Soviets, who could denounce Stalin and fall back on an allegedly enlightened Lenin, China had no fallback. For better or worse, Mao was the face of the Chinese Revolution.

Deng’s leadership stance fostered ever more violent forms of neo-Maoism. In 1980, on Mao’s birthday, Peru’s Shining Path hung dead dogs from lampposts in Lima in protest of Deng’s perceived betrayal of global Maoism.

Neo-Maoism remains a force in Chinese academia and government. From this perspective, Chinese internationalists are right-wing, and Maoists are the nationalist left. To some degree, the CCP tolerates neo-Maoism while suppressing democratic forms of dissent.

Hesam Forozan provides a detailed study of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also known as the Sepah. The study covers the role of the Sepah in Iran’s economy, military, foreign policy, internal security, and politics.

Three components comprise the IRGC: the Sepah, the Basij, and the Qods Force. The Basij handles domestic security. Tasked with exporting the Islamic revolution and promoting Iran as a regional power, the Qods Force has been active in Syria, Lebanon, and especially Iraq, supporting Shia militia groups and political candidates. The Sepah controls Iran’s ballistic missiles and nuclear program.

Economically, the Sepah controls most large government contracts. Sanctions limit the amount of foreign investment in Iran’s economy. When foreign companies manage to invest, as in the case of a large Turkish telecommunications contract, the Sepah attempts to exclude such foreign investment on national security grounds.

Lacking the Sepah’s infrastructure and financial network, Iranians unaffiliated with the Sepah are limited to investing in small- and medium-sized enterprises. Using its financial network, the Sepah evades the impact of sanctions. “Included in this network is the Iranian tycoon Babak Zanjani,” who used a “web of 64 companies in Dubai, Turkey, and Malaysia to sell billions of barrels of oil.” The result is that the Sepah is “at odds with the private sector and the rest of society, which have borne the cost of international sanctions.”

In addition to its prominence in Iran’s legitimate economy, the Sepah is also active in its underground economy of smuggled goods. “Engaged in the smuggling of goods such as alcohol, cigarettes, and satellite dishes,” the Sepah amasses an estimated “$12 billion a year on the black market.”

In the future, it appears that the Sepah is likely to be flexible on the status of Iran’s nuclear program, provided it benefits from any sanctions relief that might accompany such negotiations. Decoupling the Sepah from Iran’s economy will likely prove to be a more formidable task.

All told, this is a worthwhile study. It’s well worth the effort for readers interested in contemporary Iran.

While there are many books focusing on the American South during the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the modern Civil Rights Era, comparatively few focus on the South during the American Revolution. Historian John Richard Alden’s The South in the Revolution 1763-1789 shows the significance of the South in Colonial America, during the Revolution, and in the formation of the new nation of America. While the role of all of the Southern colonies was significant, Virginia would play an outsized role in sparking the Revolution and in the leadership and debate during the Constitutional Convention.

The Southern Colonies and the Emergence of the Southern States

The states comprising the South on the eve of the Revolution included the following: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolonia, Georgia, and Maryland. The territory that comprised the South would change. Maryland would, in time, not be part of the South. Some Southern states were formed out of existing states. Kentucky was part of Virginia, and Tennessee was part of North Carolonia. Alabama and Mississippi were part of Georgia. Other territories were under Spanish or French control. Louisiana was under Spanish and then French control. Still other territories would eventually be merged or briefly formed as an independent territory, only to have their independence dissolved. Sparsely settled Florida was divided into East and West Florida, but the two were later merged when Florida became a state. The short-lived Franklin, part of North Carolina, was briefly an independent territory. Franklin, as a separate state, dissolved and then reemerged as part of North Carolina.

The Southern Colonial Economy

In contrast to the Northern Colonies, the South’s economy was primarily agricultural. This would become a key part of the region’s identity. “The merchant,” notes Alden, “he who engaged in commerce beyond the local, was less important in the Southern economy than in that of New England or Pennsylvania.”

At the time of the revolution, Cotton was not yet the staple crop in the South that it would become. Southern colonies exported rice and indigo (used for tar and turpentine). Tobacco was then the region’s largest (and most profitable) export. “Virginia and Maryland exported vast quantities of tobacco, over 100,000,000 pounds annually.” While tobacco could be hugely profitable, its profitability fluctuated. “The profits in fortunate periods were large; and its planters tended to remember the fat years, to forget, or at least ignore, the more numerous lean ones.”

On the eve of the Revolution, the principal cities of the South were Baltimore, Norfolk, Savannah, and, most significantly, Charleston. With a population of 10,000 (half of whom were slaves), Charleston was the fourth-largest city in the thirteen colonies and the only Southern port city. It was a place where the planter class and merchant class intersected. The city’s ports and wharves maintained a thriving ocean-going and river trade. “Before 1775 as many as 400 ocean-going ships, averaging between 200 and 300 tons, annually used the ports of South Carolina, principally Charleston.”

Southern Colonial Society

At the top of Southern colonial society, sociologically, was the Southern planter aristocrat. Some historical accounts have portrayed this gentleman as primarily a man of leisure, content to let others work for him while he busied himself with gaming pursuits. Alden challenges this portrayal. He notes that a Southern plantation owner occupied a place that “required constant supervision; the Anglican Church, to which in Virginia he almost invariably belonged, demanded some attention and more support; the courts, local and otherwise, called him to service; the militia of his neighborhood took up arms at his order; the House of Burgesses and the councils of the governors beckoned him to labor.”

While the Southern colonies did contain men of advanced learning, such as Jefferson and Madison, the great majority of patrician men and women acquired an education through informal means. “Formal instruction for the girls ceased early, except for music and the fine arts; for the majority of the boys also, learning under the direction of more or less professional teachers soon ended, an elementary education with the rudiments of the classics and an introduction to literature being then usually thought sufficient.”

History has largely focused on the Southern colonial upper class (since they were the prominent decision makers). However, they “numbered perhaps no more than 10,000 persons.” It was at one time a myth in Southern history, applying to the antebellum period, that Southern society was divided between the wealthy planter class, slaves, and poor whites. Frank Lawrence Owsley challenged this myth in his book Plain Folk of the Old South. As Alden notes, Southern colonial society also included a middle class, consisting of “prosperous but lesser planters owning but a few slaves and yeoman farmers who possessed one or two or no slaves, together with traders, storekeepers, professional folk, and artisans.”

Southern colonial society recognized distinctions between social classes. Precisely how might have been difficult to express. However, class distinctions were made between the poor and the middle class, and between the middle class and the affluent. There was also fluidity between the classes. A middle class family could become part of the upper class. Likewise, with a downward turn in its fortunes, an affluent family could cease to be upper class. Members of a Virginia family that had fallen on hard times observed that their former affluent friends did “not now meet [us] with so great respect, as … they formerly did.” At the bottom of the social hierarchy (just above black slaves) were white indentured servants. These were “men and women who had contracted willingly or otherwise to work four or more years for a master, in return for payment of their passage to America, in lieu of punishment for crime in England, and for diverse reasons.” Unlike black slaves, white indentured servants could move up the social ladder once their term of service ended.

At the bottom of the Southern colonial social ladder were blacks, enslaved or free, although free blacks were few in number. The child of a black female slave was considered a slave regardless of the race of the father. Black slaves were placed into the most physically demanding and hazardous duties, such as the farming of indigo in stagnant water. Beyond the physical deprivations of slavery was the general denial of black humanity by Southern whites. One evidence of this can be seen in Virginia’s Declaration of Rights in 1776, which declared all men “by nature equally free and independent,” but only after they “enter into a state of society.” Blacks were assumed not to have entered into a state of society. Following the Revolution, there were those, such as Jefferson, who advocated for emancipation with the caveat that emancipated blacks would need to migrate outside the country. Writing in 1787 in Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson addressed the possible problems created by permitting emancipated blacks to remain in the country as follows: “Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state…Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end…”

The presence of Indians on the colonial South’s frontier was a source of conflict, especially during the Revolution. With Spain, France, and England all vying for power in colonial America, Native American tribes would play one European power against another to their advantage. However, after the 1763 Treaty of Paris, that advantage was lost, with England becoming the predominant colonial power in America. During the Revolution, securing the neutrality of an Indian tribe often became a competition between the British and Americans over which side could offer the tribe the most valuable gifts. At times, the British enlisted the Indians as fighters against the patriots. However, Indian tribes sometimes failed to distinguish between white loyalists and patriots. Furthermore, the Indian method of warfare was more about inflicting as much violence as possible on the enemy than about achieving a specific military objective.

Internal Conflict in the Southern Colonies

Along with conflict on the frontier between white settlers and Indians, there was also internal conflict between colonists. This conflict occurred in North and South Carolina with the rise of the Regulators, rural groups of citizen militia formed to address the concerns of rural colonists. In North Carolina, the conflict produced bloodshed and resulted in the hanging of some of the leaders of the Regulators. In South Carolina, the conflict was peacefully resolved in a standoff, but the Regulators’ concerns were unaddressed.

In South Carolina, there was conflict between the Low Country colonists in Charleston and those in the Upcountry in the rural interior. The conflict centered on the lack of legislative representation, judges, and educators accorded to the Upcountry colonists. On the eve of the Revolution, the rural Upcountry was something of a Wild West, and the patrician Charleston establishment looked down on the Upcountry’s perceived unrefinedness. The Reverend Charles Woodmason was an Anglican missionary minister and landowner in the Upcountry. Woodmason served as spokesman for the rural Regulators. Writing to Charleston statesman and attorney John Rutledge, Woodmason reminded the Charleston establishment of the shared history between Upcountry and Low Country South Carolinians. “Pray, are We not all Subjects of the same King? Fellow Protestants? Fellow Xtians [Christians]? Fellow Britons? Of the same Blood and Origin? Are any of Your Descents, Greater, Nobler, ancienter, more reputable than ours?” As a loyalist during the Revolution, Woodmason left the American colonies to resettle in England. In 1956, Woodmason’s journal, The Carolina Back Country on the Eve of the Revolution, was published. It is one of the most extensive first-hand accounts of life on the American frontier prior to the Revolution.

The Stamp Act and the Beginning of the Revolution

Perhaps no phrase is more closely associated with the American Revolution than “no taxation without representation.” However, it might be more precise to say that American colonists simply had an aversion to taxation in general, as they were largely unaccustomed to it, especially compared with British subjects in England. At the close of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, England faced significant debt. The Crown could not place an additional tax burden on British subjects in England. Hence, it had to turn to the American colonists to raise additional revenue. The result was the Stamp Act of 1765, essentially a tax on legal transactions and ocean-going ship cargo. The act extended to other items, such as newspapers, but the tax on ship cargo proved especially controversial. The colonists rebelled at the imposition of the tax, forcing its eventual repeal. This rebellion (and the opposition against other taxes) did not inevitably lead to an American declaration of independence from England. Also, a majority of those in certain segments of colonial society, such as port shipping merchants, remained British loyalists. However, the Stamp Act ignited a movement towards independence that would eventually override all attempts at neutrality and at remaining loyal to the Crown.

The Southern colonies would eventually unite behind the movement towards independence. The level of support for independence and the speed at which it was embraced were unevenly distributed. As one of the newest colonies, Georgia relied more heavily on economic support from England. Hence, it was slower to embrace independence than other colonies. Because their livelihoods were threatened, port shipping merchants in Charleston were slow to oppose the Stamp Act. The British made unsuccessful attempts to appeal to the interests of one colony in an effort to enforce the compliance of all the colonies. All attempts to impose loyalty to the Crown would eventually fail.

The spark that united the Southern colonies (and all the colonies) in a movement toward independence came from Virginia, in particular from the speeches of and resolutions of Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Burgesses in May of 1765. Henry made seven resolutions to the House of Burgesses regarding taxation. Resolution two asserted the general principle of no taxation without representation. Resolution five asserted that Virginia’s General Assembly was the only body authorized to impose a tax on Virginians. More radically, resolutions six and seven maintained that Virginians had the right to reject any tax not levied by the Virginia General Assembly and that anyone maintaining otherwise should be considered “an enemy to His Majesty’s colony.” The House of Burgesses voted to approve Henry’s first four resolutions. However, approval of the fifth resolution was granted but then withdrawn. And the resolutions six and seven were not approved.

Henry’s resolutions set in motion a chain reaction of historical events. Even though Virginia’s House of Burgesses failed to approve Henry’s fifth, sixth, and seventh resolutions, “newspapers outside Virginia one way or another, secured copies of them, perhaps originating from Henry’s drafts, which indicated that burgesses had approved the substance of his fifth, sixth, and even his seventh propositions.” Based on this reporting, the colonial governments of several colonies “solemnly condemned the Stamp Act.” The result was the Stamp Act Congress in October of 1765, consisting of representatives from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina. Virginia was excluded from the Congress because Francis Fauquier, Virginia’s Colonial Lieutenant Governor, banned Virginia’s House of Burgesses from meeting again to approve a resolution to attend the Congress.

The protest against the Stamp Act would force its eventual repeal. However, it was not the only controversial tax imposed on the colonists in 1765. The Quartering Act of 1765 proved controversial as well. This act required the colonists to quarter British troops and pay for their maintenance. Like the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act represented a departure from British policy toward the American colonies. “Before 1765,” Alden notes, “the bulk of the redcoats in America were stationed outside the settled parts of the Thirteen Colonies.” It was an informal practice to provide what redcoats needed as they passed through colonial communities. The Quartering Act turned what had been voluntary into a legal requirement. More troubling for the colonists was the threat implied by the indefinite presence of British troops in colonial communities. Colonists protested the Quartering Acts of 1765 and the expanded Quartering Act of 1774. The legacy of the Quartering Acts can be seen in the Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits requiring citizens to house troops in private homes in peacetime without the owner’s consent.

The Quartering Act of 1774 was part of what became known as the Intolerable Acts, a series of acts the British imposed on the colonists in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Between the repeal of the Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts in 1774, there was perhaps a possibility of reconciliation between America and the Crown. There were those such as Daniel Dulany, a popular pamphleteer who wrote against the Stamp Act but who nevertheless “became a cautious loyalist.” In England, William Pitt, “whose influence was to make possible repeal” of the Stamp Act. Yet, Pitt also came to oppose American independence. With the imposition of the Intolerable Acts, it was clearly only a matter of time before British troops would be used in force against the colonists. When the American colonists were killed at Lexington and Concord in 1775, any possibility of American neutrality was lost. It became impossible for colonists to oppose British taxation while also favoring continued loyalty to Britain. Lexington and Concord united the Southern and Northern colonies in opposition to Britain in a way that the Stamp Act or other British taxes could not.

The War for American Independence in the South

The American military victory at Saratoga in 1777 and the eventual surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown are among the most important and well-known turning points in the war. The fighting in the South was also fierce and significant, as it greatly weakened British forces. Military communication and logistics were slow in the American colonies. This made resupplying or reinforcing troops difficult. Hence, even when the British forced an American retreat, they were in no position to press their advantage. This was made especially clear at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolonia on March 15, 1781. Fighting under Cornwallis’ command, the British forced the retreat of American General Nathanael Greene. At one point in the battle, Cornwallis “had his artillerymen load three guns with grapeshot and fire them through the British ranks into the patriots.” Although Cornwallis emerged victorious, “his injured and slain reached 532, about 28 percent of his army.” Meanwhile, “Greene’s losses, except for vanished militia, most of which could be expected to return to service, were much smaller, 261 dead or wounded.”

Both the British and American sides benefited from foreign military participation. German Hessian soldiers constituted a significant portion of British forces. However, the foreign support given to the patriot side would prove more decisive, especially French naval support. There were individuals who aided the American side for their own reasons. The national assistance that Spain and France provided to the Americans was driven by a calculated desire to weaken the British and strengthen their respective countries’ interests.

Count Casimir Pulaski, a Polish cavalry commander, fought for the patriot side in both the Northern and Southern colonies. In Poland, Pulaski participated in a failed attempt to kidnap the King of Poland, whom he suspected of being a Russian puppet. Pulaski was exiled to France, where he met Benjamam Franklin. The French wanted Pulaski out of the country, and Franklin knew that the American side needed cavalrymen. Pulaski left for America. He fought in Pennsylvania in the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, where his skills as a cavalry commander are credited with saving George Washington’s life. Pulaski was fatally wounded fighting in Savannah on October 9, 1779. He is remembered today for his heroic service on behalf of the American cause. Pulaski, Tennessee, is one of several American places named in his honor. Pulaski is also one of a handful of non-Americans who were posthumously awarded honorary American citizenship. [1]

Spain entered the war on the American side, and their efforts proved significant in weakening the British. The Spanish Governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Gálvez, led Spanish forces. “In Louisiana, the Spanish were by no means powerful, but Galvez hoped to secure support from the French inhabitants and also from Cuba. In August 1779, he boldly led a motley force of Spanish regulars, militia, Americans, and Indians against the English outposts on the lower Mississippi, at Manchac, Baton Rouge, and Natchez.” Gálvez’s forces captured these British outposts, then moved on to capture Mobile. By far, though, Gálvez’s greatest military achievement was the capture of Pensacola from the British on May 8, 1781. This proved to be a key turning point in the war. “West Florida thus fell into Spanish hands, and the British were thereafter able to supply their allies among the Southern Indians only from Savannah and St. Augustine.”

The French also entered the war on the American side, and the French navy was a key factor in the surrender of British forces at Yorktown, Virginia. Under the command of French Admiral De Grasse, “a powerful fleet from France” sailed “to the West Indies” en route to America in 1781. “De Grasse reached the Chesapeake on August 30, put ashore 3,000 French troops under the Marquis de Saint-Simon on September 5. These promptly joined the Continentals and Virginia militia under Lafayette. The French admiral also sent up the bay transports that loaded the troops of Washington and Rochambeau and brought them to the James River on September 18.” The eventual surrender of Cornwallis was aided by British miscalculation. Cornwallis waited too long to attempt to extricate his forces from Yorktown. Although the British Navy learned of De Grasse’s intentions, it failed to act decisively to reinforce British naval forces. Cornwallis was cornered, and he formally surrendered to Washington on October 19.

The Federalists and Anti-Federalists

The new nation now transitioned from war to peacetime society and began the long debate over the American Constitution. In so doing, political factions emerged that, in some ways, came to define American political life for years to come. What each side represented and who it spoke for wasn’t always clearly defined. However, generally speaking, there were two schools of thought. There were those who generally favored a stronger central government and a policy of honoring America’s pre-war debts to British merchants. This group also tended to support a fiscal policy of hard money or money backed by gold. This group was known as the Federalists and was represented by James Madison and Alexander Hamilition. Their ideas were captured in The Federalist Papers. Over time, the Federalist camp would be represented politically as the Whig Party and later the Republican Party. Regionally and economically, the policies of the Federalists were seen to favor the North and also favor merchants.

Another political camp emerged as the anti-Federalists. This group favored a less centralized form of government and a policy of cancelling America’s pre-war debt to British creditors. This group also tended to support a fiscal policy of soft money or paper money, not necessarily backed by gold. This group was represented by Patrick Henry and George Mason. Unlike the Federalists, they did not produce a formal book similar to The Federalist Papers, although a collection of their speeches and newspaper articles was later published as The Anti-Federalist Papers. Over time, the Anti-Federalist camp would emerge under Thomas Jefferson’s presidency as the Democratic Party. Regionally and economically, the policies of the Anti-Federalists were seen to favor the South and also favor farmers.

American Navigation on the Spanish-Controlled Lower Mississippi River

Although the U.S. Constitution eventually won ratification by all the states, contentious issues still remained. In terms of those affected in the South, perhaps no economic issue loomed larger than free navigation of the Lower Mississippi River, which Spain controlled. As Alden notes, Spain greatly aided the American side during the War, but after the fighting, the Spanish monarchy was unfriendly to the new nation. Spain “refused to recognize American independence, at least until the British had done so, and they were disposed to limit American territory as rigidly as possible. They disliked republicanism; they feared that a successful republican regime in the United States would spur revolution in Spain’s New World.” Navigation of the river was vital to those on the Southern frontier, “who could hardly send their products by land over the mountains.” These settlers needed to ship their products “by way of the river and the Gulf of Mexico.” Spain eventually granted the right of navigation to America on the Lower Mississippi in the Treaty of San Lorenzo, also known as Pickney’s Treaty, on October 27, 1795. [2]

Christianity and the American Revolution

Alden handles military, economic, and political history quite well. However, the book is notably inadequate in dealing with the topic of religion in the South and in the context of the Revolution. At one point, Alden relates an anecdote about backwoods Southern men travelling to see a woman baptized in order to see through her blouse. From these and other comments, the role of faith in the South is trivialized. Christianity has always held a central place in Southern culture, regardless of race or socioeconomic background. Also, during the American Revolution, Christian ministers played a vital role in openly supporting the revolution in their sermons. This was true in New England but also in the South. In his book God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution, Thomas Kidd underscores the important role of ministers and military chaplains during the Revolution. Kidd notes that in January of 1776, Virginia Anglican Pastor Peter Muhlenberg finished his sermon and “shed his clerical gown—and revealed a uniform underneath. The twenty-nine-year-old pastor had accepted an appointment as a colonel of a Virginia regiment. He and Patrick Henry were the only nonmilitary appointees for such offices in Virginia.” It is noteworthy to contrast how American Revolutionary pastors openly supported the revolution and how some American pastors today are careful to avoid being perceived as political.

Separation of Church and State?

Elsewhere, Alden characterizes the result of Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom (1786) as follows: “One form of tyranny over the mind of man received its American deathblow as a result of the Revolution.” This is to misread the statute as somehow banning required church attendance or some form of mandated Christian belief. In fact, the statute merely removed the taxpayer funding of the Anglican church in Virginia. Furthermore, Alden’s misreading of the statute plays into the popular historical misreading of the statute as establishing the separation of church and state when it merely disestablished the Anglican church in Virginia. Philip Hamburger’s book Separation of Church and State exhaustively explores the distinction between the popular misunderstanding of separation of church and state and what the Constitution actually says about disestablishment.

Notes

1 See https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/casimir-pulaski

2 See https://history.state.gov/milestones/1784-1800/pickney-treaty

In Three Philosophies of Life, Peter Kreeft provides a philosophical study of Ecclesiastes (life as vanity), Job (life as suffering), and Song of Songs (life as love). Kreeft, a longtime professor of philosophy at Boston College and an apologist for Christianity in general and Roman Catholicism in particular, brings a valuable and unique perspective to the study of these books of the Bible. Arguably, Ecclesiastes and Job lend themselves to a philosophical reading more than does the Song of Songs. Hence, although Kreeft’s study is, on the whole, illuminating, the Ecclesiastes and Job portions of the book are arguably the most helpful.

Ecclesiastes: Life as Vanity

Ecclesiastes provides an ideal entry point for those new to the Christian faith or interested in learning more about it. Ecclesiastes portrays the problem of modern vanity, not in the narcissistic sense of self-admiration, but in the sense of life’s utter pointlessness. Vainly striving to find meaning in life’s pointlessness is a perspective held by twentieth-century existentialist philosophers, such as Sartre. In some modern secular perspectives, traditional Christianity is rejected in favor of something akin to ethical agnosticism. As Kreeft notes, Sartre rejects such philosophical off-ramps and genuinely confronts the dilemma of modern humanity in his essay, “Existentialism and Humanism,” as follows:

God does not exist and ... we have to face all the consequences of this. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain kind of secular ethics which would like to abolish God with the least possible expense. ... The existentialist, on the contrary, thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears with Him; there can be no a priori Good since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think of it. Nowhere is it written the Good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is, we are on a plane where there are only men.

Ecclesiastes confronts the reality of life devoid of meaning. The writer of Ecclesiastes seeks meaning in pleasure and in the pursuit of knowledge, but finds only emptiness. People can naturally relate to failed attempts to fill life’s void through pleasure or even through the pursuit of knowledge. However, the writer of Ecclesiastes also seeks meaning in life through philanthropy, only to be confronted once more with meaninglessness. “That is perhaps,” as Kreeft notes, “the most shocking lesson of all to the typically modern counterpart who assumes that of course a life of service to neighbor is the highest wisdom, the greatest good, and the definitive and self-sufficient answer to the problem of vanity.”

While Ecclesiastes confronts the meaninglessness of life, it also suggests a solution. God has “made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man’s mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end” (Revised Standard Version, Eccles. 3.11). It is as if God has intentionally allowed humanity to fail to find meaning in life, not as our end result, but so that we will seek something beyond this life: God.

Job: Life as Suffering

The book of Job presents a classic philosophical problem: how can a good, all-powerful God allow evil in the world? The problem is made more pressing in the case of Job, since the Bible describes him as “blameless and upright” (Job 1:8). Yet Job endured severe suffering in losing his livelihood, children, and health.

Commentators on the book of Job have suggested that no person in history has suffered more than Job. While this observation is correct, it overlooks an important point, which Kreeft illuminates. “Not all of us lose our children, our health, our possessions, and our confidence in one day. But all of us must learn to lose everything but God, for all of us will die, and you cannot take anything with you but God.”

Readers of Job are permitted to know (which Job does not know) the reason for Job’s suffering: God was testing the genuineness of his faith. This testing was not, as Kreeft points out, to prove God worthy of Job’s devotion, since God needs no validation. The testing was for Job’s benefit. God forces Job to believe in Him “out of sheer faith, even when experience and appearances seem to contradict faith--like Jesus on the Cross, forsaken by God, without consolation of any kind.”

Amid his trials, Job questioned the justice of his suffering. Eventually, God answered Job’s questions. God did not, though, as Kreeft notes, answer Job in the form of a multi-volume work of theology. That would have temporarily satisfied Job’s longings, but it would have ultimately produced further questions. The answer to Job’s questions wasn’t a specific theological formulation, but God Himself. In response to seeing God, Job responded thusly: “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see thee” (Job 42.5). As Kreeft notes, “God answers Job’s deepest heart quest: to see God face to face; to see Truth, not truths; to meet Truth, not just to know it.”

Song of Songs: Life as Love

Ecclesiastes and Job lend themselves to a philosophical interpretation. Such is less the case with Song of Songs or Song of Solomon. It seems to be a portion of the Bible that is somewhat avoided in public worship or church teaching settings. Even longtime church members are unlikely to have heard a sermon from Song of Songs. The reason for the avoidance seems clear enough: Song of Songs contains frank depictions of physical intimacy. Hence, if the book is discussed at all, it’s referred to as an allegory, interpreted along the lines of Christ’s love for the church. Kreeft admits the interpretative challenges in approaching the text. He offers several helpful insights based on the book. However, to some degree, some of his interpretations are open to question.

Kreeft points out that Song of Songs demonstrates that love is a song. This music is reflected in creation and within the Godhead. “The dialogue between male and female creatures reflects the dialogue within the Creator, the dialogue between Father and Son that eternally becomes the Holy Spirit. Life is dialogue ultimately because life is a reflection of God; and the very life of God, the eternal inner life of the Trinity, is the dialogue of love.”

Kreeft sees further echoes of the Trinity in the exchange of selves between husband and wife in marriage. This oneness in love is expressed in Song of Songs 2:16: “My beloved is mine and I am his.” From this exchange of selves in love, Kreeft sees an analogy in the Trinity: “Lovers belong to each other because love is the nature of God, and the Persons in the Divine Trinity give themselves to each other.”

In interpreting Song of Songs, Kreeft cites the Medieval method of Scriptural interpretation, known as the “fourfold method of exegesis.” As G.R. Evans notes in Faith in the Medieval Word, this fourfold method included the literal, allegorical, moral, and analogical senses. However, it “began with the literal sense.” Kreeft’s interpretation of Song of Songs arguably suffers from inadequate attention to the literal sense.

Kreeft sees one man and one woman in Song of Songs with Solomon as “the bridegroom.” However, in interpreting Song of Songs as part of A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the Old Testament, Miles V. Van Pelt sees two men and one woman. According to Van Pelt, King Solomon invites the woman in the story to join his royal harem, an offer she rejects in favor of being united with her beloved, a shepherd.

Van Pelt sees parallels between King Ahasuerus’s harem in Esther 2 and King Solomon’s harem in Song of Songs. “Of the two male figures that the Song presents,” writes Van Pelt, “Solomon has access to the harem in 3:6 and following, but the man appearing in 2:7 does not have access to the harem.” The woman is “together with her beloved” in 8:5, and she signals her “rejection of Solomon and harem life in 8:11-12.”

Van Pelt also sees similarities between the language of Proverbs and the Song of Songs. “[I]n Proverbs...a young man is instructed by his parents to choose between two ways, the way of wisdom or the way of folly, each of which is exemplified by two women: Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly.” In Song of Songs, Van Pelt sees Solomon representing the way of folly. The woman must choose between becoming part of Solomon’s harem or her exclusive devotion to her beloved shepherd. Despite the temptations of Solomon, she ultimately chooses the true, monogamous love of her beloved.

Van Pelt’s interpretation greatly helps in understanding the Song of Songs. The woman’s choice between wisdom and folly and her ultimate decision for good is a timeless truth. And from this perspective, the book’s passionate depictions of physical intimacy between a woman and her “beloved” can rightly be appreciated as the God-intended intimacy within a monogamous marriage.

All told, Kreeft’s book has much to recommend it. While it is worth reading and studying in full, the chapters on Ecclesiastes and Job are the most helpful. These portions of the book would make a good basis for a Bible study, especially one including those who are new to or interested in Christianity.

Pierre Razoux’s The Iran-Iraq War provides a comprehensive account of the war’s military aspects. It also presents a detailed overview of the arms sales to either or both countries throughout the war. Lastly, the study shows the political impact of the conflict on both countries, during and after hostilities.

The formal beginning of the Iran-Iraq war is 22 September 1980 (when Iraq attacked Iran), and the official end date is 20 August 1988, when Iran accepted the terms of the UN ceasefire. Saddam Hussein’s precise objectives for the war remain unclear. Generally, Saddam wanted “to reestablish Iraqi sovereignty over the entire Shatt al-Arab” and “take control of some bordering oil-rich Iranian territory.” Saddam’s perception that Ayatollah Khomeini “would stop at nothing to bring [him] down” was also a key factor leading to the war.

The war has several fronts. There was a territorial war of ground fighting, an air war against critical military assets, a war of cities targeting civilian populations, and an economic war targeting oil facilities and shipping lanes.

The Iranian air force was superior to Iraq’s. However, at the start of the war, the air force was perceived as loyal to the Shah. Hence, some Iranian pilots languished in jail or were training in America, afraid to return to Iran.

The political fallout of the revolution also inhibited Iran’s military intelligence capabilities. With assistance from American intelligence, the Shah had “an electronic interception system,” enabling Iran to “spy on Iraq.” There were ground stations “located in Kurdistan and the Zagros Mountains.” But as the war started, “most of the technicians employed in running the two ground stations and the three aircraft” had “emigrated or were imprisoned.”

Early in the war, Iraq gained the capability to “decrypt a significant volume of” Iranian messages. In order “to negotiate his escape to Baghdad,” an Iranian officer gifted the Iraqis with “a Crypto-52 enciphering machine,” which “the Iranian military high command” used “to communicate with its troops.” Iraq, however, was unable to monitor the communications of the Pasdaran, since they did not communicate electronically.

Saddam lavished gifts on officers who succeeded in battle. Those who retreated without authorization or showed themselves unprepared for a surprise attack faced execution. In April of 1981, after Iran’s successful attack on Iraq’s H-3 military airfield, “six senior officers” responsible for the airfield’s defense “were arrested and executed.”

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s speaker of Parliament, was the key figure in Iran’s war strategy. Rafsanjani stood virtually alone among Iran’s leadership in wanting to continue the war after 1982. Rafsanjani proved willing to risk high casualty rates through human wave assault tactics, often involving very young soldiers.

Some of Iran’s young soldiers enlisted out of religious devotion. Selected for “suicide missions,” these youths were “unarmed, carrying only their keys to paradise and a Koran as they crossed Iraqi minefields to set off the mines and open the way for the Pasdaran.” Other boys fought out of “social pressure,” seeking “to impress their parents, classmates, teachers, or even their fiancées.” Still, other youths joined “to obtain social status,” or “gain easier access to higher education.”

While Iran resorted to young soldiers, Iraq resorted to using chemical weapons. Razoux highlights one Iranian use of such weapons in the war. Iraq, however, used such weapons on many occasions. Napalm, nerve gas, and mustard gas were all part of the Iraqi arsenal. Saddam’s authorization of chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in 1988 “would provide the grounds for his death sentence.” Ali Hassan al-Majid, an Iraqi defense minister, would become known as “Chemical Ali” and face an eventual execution “for his role in the [Halabja] massacre.”

Both sides in the war would use SCUD missiles. Although relatively inaccurate, these missiles were part of the war on the cities, used to terrorize civilian populations. Iran launched SCUDS at Baghdad, and Iraq fired them at Tehran and other major Iranian cities.

Oil exports were the chief means of financing the war for both countries. Both sides attacked each other’s oil facilities and tried to disrupt shipping, raising insurance prices. Arguably more economically devastating than military attacks were the economic actions of Saudi Arabia and the United States. With the intent of bringing “the Soviet system to its knees,” America convinced the Saudis to increase oil production dramatically, which they did in 1985. Concurrently, America “allowed its currency to drop, further diminishing oil revenue, which was negotiated in dollars.”

Foreign military sales played a significant part in the war, with some countries selling to both sides. China earned approximately 6 billion in military sales to Iraq and an estimated 3 billion in sales to Iran. “Every other [European] state,” except for Ireland, was involved “in selling military equipment to one or often both” sides. “In all, some forty nations contributed to the Iraqi and Iranian war efforts. At some point or other, half of them provided material support both to Iraq and Iran--including the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.”

Iraq largely financed its weapons purchases on credit, especially from the Soviets, France, and China. The result was that although Iraq won the war, it was somewhat of a hollow victory since it emerged from hostilities deeply in debt. At the close of the war, Saddam had an army he could not afford to maintain and could ill-afford to disband. Saudi Arabia forgave Iran’s war debt. Kuwait refused to do so “and insisted on maintaining very low oil prices.” These actions would lead to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Isolated from the international lending market, Iran paid cash to finance the war. This forced rationing on the civilian population. Some Iranian political leaders wanted to open Iran to the outside world. Other leaders advocated an isolationist policy. The Iranian civilian population was trapped between the two factions during the war and remains so today.

All in all, this was a well-informed study. It is highly recommended for anyone interested in the Iran-Iraq war.

In David McCullough’s biography of John Adams, he shares a story about John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams. The two had a layover and were awaiting the arrival of a ship to board, leaving them with time to spare. They passed the time by translating a classical Latin work. Times have certainly changed. At one time, for the relatively small percentage of Americans who attended college, knowledge of Latin was assumed, not for graduation but for admission.

As higher education came to focus on business, social science, and scientific and technical knowledge, the study of Latin was de-emphasized, if not omitted altogether from curricula. However, in recent years, there has been a renewed interest in classical education and in Latin, especially among homeschool students. William Linney’s book, Getting Started With Latin, is perhaps evidence of this trend.

The book offers an ideal introduction to Latin for those who are (no kidding) truly new to the subject. Linney presents a unique, learn-by-translation approach to language study. Beginning with simple two-word sentences, each lesson progresses to ten Latin sentences for the student to translate to English. Words are repeated, thereby reinforcing learning.

The book includes basic Latin vocabulary, present tense verb endings, conjunctions, prepositions, infinitives, noun endings, direct and indirect objects, and adjectives. By itself, the book will not make one a Latin scholar. However, the book is a good starting point before formal study of Latin or before pursuing more advanced informal study using a more academic text, such as Wheelock’s Latin. Additionally, Linney has written a follow-on Latin text, Keep Going With Latin.

Linney’s book can not be recommended more highly. Unlike many self-study books, this book genuinely delivers on its title.

In Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda, John Maxwell Hamilton provides a comprehensive study of propaganda used to galvanize American public opinion in support of America’s entry into World War I. Hamilton’s study largely focuses on the Committee on Public Information (CPI), which the government established at the beginning of the war and disbanded not long after the war’s end. As Hamilton notes, when surveyed in 1937, 70 percent of Americans “believed it had been a mistake to enter the war.” Yet the public largely supported the war as it occurred. How propaganda was used mobilize public support for a cause that Americans largely came to reject is the book’s strongest point. The book is notably weakest when attempting correlate World War I era propaganda with modern propaganda in the Internet age.

Prior to and during America’s involvement in World War I, propaganda was an international phenomenon. There was French, German, and especially British propaganda. These governments and the U.S. Government sometimes concealed the extent or even the existence of propaganda and their role in it. This was especially true of the British government. America largely followed the British example by distancing itself from its own wartime propaganda.

A key first step in establishing wartime propaganda was controlling the flow of information. The British successfully isolated Germany by cutting transatlantic cables, monitoring German mail, and monitoring German communication entering the United States. This also allowed Britain to influence the terms of debate over American entry into the war.

The British also benefited from German aggression in Belgium and the German sinking of the British passenger ocean liner, the Lusitania, resulting in the death of 1,200 people, including 128 Americans. The Lusitania contained ammunition headed for Britain. Those in the United States urging neutrality noted the crippling effects of the British blockade on Germany’s food supply. However, as one observer noted, Americans had difficulty visualizing, “German children starving by slow degrees as a result of the British blockade, but they can visualize the pitiful face of a child drowning amidst the wreckage caused by a German torpedo.”

Perhaps the decisive event in triggering America’s entry into the war was what would become known as the Zimmerman Telegram. This audacious ploy involved the German state secretary for foreign affairs, Arthur Zimmerman, sending a telegram to the Mexican government, offering German help in reclaiming United States territory formerly part of Mexico in exchange for a Mexican-German alliance in the war. The telegram reached Mexico via the United States. Monitoring German communications entering the United States, British intelligence read the telegram. The British then ensured that its content was leaked to the American press. The telegram caused a sensation in official Washington, all but ensuring American entry into the war. In describing the telegram’s effect, a British official wrote, “No more perfect propaganda could have been conceived.”

A British Political Cartoon Showing Germany Dividing the United States Between Mexico and Germany

As America prepared to enter the war, military mobilization was urgent. But the mobilization of American public opinion in support of the war was even more urgent. This led the Wilson administration to establish the Committee on Public Information (CPI), with muckraking journalist George Creel selected as its head. Hamilton ably analyzes the philosophical underpinnings of the CPI and their relation to wartime propaganda.

Wilson and others who were part of or aided the CPI during the war had a social reform mindset. As governor of New Jersey, Wilson thought that publicity would have a cleansing effect on exposing the state’s political corruption. Some of those involved in wartime propaganda held a similar philosophy. The idea was that just as slums could be cleared, prohibition enacted, and poor working conditions and business trusts exposed, propaganda would expose the pure rationale for entering the war and its just aims.

Alongside a reformist zeal, the Wilson administration and some of those aiding the CPI held a patrician mindset: the best-educated portion of the population had an obligation to persuade the plebian public to support the war. Speaking to an affluent audience at Chicago’s City Club, educator and lecturer Arthur Bestor noted that “America entered the war chiefly on account of the belief of its intelligent classes.” And because the war was one “for which the intellectual group was so largely responsible, the educated people of the country must see to it that America keeps steadfast to its job.” Similarly, Wilson believed that the public should be guided into the correct opinions that it should have about the war and that it was the president’s duty to direct that effort.

Along with noblesse oblige on the part of the ruling class, the operation of the CPI also depended in large part on patriotic obligation. Academics, businesspeople, journalists, filmmakers, cartoonists, writers, and others volunteered their time and money and put their lives on hold to support the CPI. This largely occurred without government coercion. Regardless of party affiliation, Americans across a wide spectrum of fields were willing participants in supporting the CPI’s propaganda mission.

America’s entry into the war coincided with the establishment of sociology and related disciplines as academic fields. Along with rapid technological change, this opened up the possibility of mass persuasion and the scientific measurement of public opinion. In 1901, Edward Alsworth Ross published Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order. The popular academic text helped to establish sociology as an academic discipline. As Hamilton notes, Ross’ book contended that “just as experts should engineer solutions on uncompetitive business practices and tuberculosis in slums, so should they engineer public opinion on a broad range of economic, social, and political issues.” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was among the book’s enthusiastic readers and recommended the book to President Theodore Roosevelt. In correspondence with Ross, Roosevelt wrote, “You insist, as all healthy-minded patriots should insist, that public opinion, if only sufficiently enlightened and aroused, is equal to necessary regenerative tasks and can yet dominate the future.”

The CPI directed government propaganda in support of the war in a variety of formats. Among the most influential formats was a nationwide network of speakers known as “The Four Minute Men.” At the dawn of the war, movie theaters showed silent films. In between portions of the film were four-minute breaks. The Four Minute Men were tasked to fill this timeslot with a patriotic speech in support of the war. The speech might urge audience members to purchase Liberty Bonds or donate binoculars to the U.S. Navy. The Four Minute Men speaking campaign was a wide-ranging success, so much so that it expanded beyond theaters to include speakers in foreign languages in urban areas, speakers on Indian reservations, Hispanic community speakers, speakers at women’s groups, and speakers at gatherings in the black community. Almost no group in America was left untouched by the Four Minute Men.

Actors Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks try their hand at being Four-Minute Men during a 1918 rally in New York City

Advertising was a key component of the CPI’s wartime propaganda campaign. Ads appeared in magazines, newspapers, and on billboards, posters, and buttons. The CPI ads were also distributed to American households via bulk mail. Advertisers were eager to demonstrate the integrity and capabilities of their profession and its application for patriotic purposes. The CPI recruited advertising man Bruce Barton to write title cards (used in silent films) for patriotic CPI films. Following the war, Barton wrote the bestselling book, The Man Nobody Knows (1925), which “portrayed Jesus as a modern business executive adept at advertising.”

Working closely with the CPI’s advertising division was the Division of Pictorial Publicity. The division recruited some of the country’s best artists, including James Montgomery Flagg, best known for “the iconic ‘I Want You’ recruiting poster with Uncle Sam pointing a finger at the viewer (inspired by a British poster showing Lord Kitchener in a similar pose).”

Liberty Loan Buttons Allowed the Wearer to Proudly Display His Contribution to the War Effort

CPI artist James Montgomery Flagg contributed this poster as part of the government’s wartime food conservation program

Alongside its advertising and art divisions, the CPI also had a film division that produced pro-war propaganda for theatrical distribution nationwide. America’s Answer to the Hun was one such film. A showing of the film at New York City’s Strand theater began “with the national anthem sung by one hundred sailors and a tableau vivant of American soldiers poised to ‘go over the top’.” Additionally, “music that accompanied the film had artillery sound effects.”

The CPI also mobilized academia as part of its mission. At the dawn of the war, traditional academic fields such as history were transforming from scholarly gentlemen’s pursuits to professional research fields with academic journals and graduate schools modeled on those in Germany. In theory, adherence to these new professional standards entailed maintaining scholarly objectivity, free of bias. However, in practice, the war proved that academics (like those in other fields) were willing to conform their research to the government’s wartime propaganda aims. One case in point is publication, The War Cyclopedia: A Handbook for Ready Reference. This reference work contained numerous entries that portrayed German influence and propaganda against the United States in a negative light. Yet, it contained “nothing comparable on British propaganda or British conflicts with the United States.” At the University of Minnesota, professors faced “loyalty interrogations.” One suggestion for professors failing such a loyalty test but wanting to redeem themselves was to write “a patriotic entry for the War Cyclopedia.”

At the war’s start, there were numerous foreign-language newspapers. The CPI faced the challenge of appealing to the American patriotism of Germans and those of other immigrant communities. One such CPI-led effort to encourage immigrant patriotism was a Loyalty Day, organized on July 4, 1918. In Washington, D.C., President Wilson and “representatives of foreign-language groups boarded the presidential yacht the Mayflower at the Navy Yard for a trip up the Potomac River” to Mount Vernon, where Wilson gave a rousing patriotic speech and where “the foreign-born laid wreaths on George Washington’s tomb.” Similar CPI-organized Loyalty Day celebrations occurred in other cities, such as New York and San Francisco. Today, it is difficult to imagine the denunciations from the establishment media that such celebrations would incur. Yet, at the time, the New York Times declared the celebrations to be a “demonstration of the loyalty of Americans of foreign birth.”

The CPI’s propaganda mission depended in large part on the patriotism of Americans and their willingness to support the CPI’s mission. However, not all Americans were consistently supportive of the CPI’s mission, and some actively opposed it outright. The potential for such an opposition created a climate of suspicion and (in some cases) the need for the CPI to censor certain publications. Illustrative of such suspicion is Samuel Hopkins Adams’s novel Common Cause (1919). In this novel, a German-American woman is overheard objecting to a speech by the Four Minute Men at a theater in her community. When the woman “complains that she is being spied upon,” she is told that she is “a suspicious person” because of her German accent.

Today, it would be unthinkable for librarians to censor their collections to be pro-government or report borrowers of certain books to government authorities. However, at the time, “Herbert Putnam, the librarian of Congress, gave office space to the CPI, where it screened books, altered Creel [CPI director] to books that others deemed questionable, and informed Creel of individuals who checked out such volumes.”

On September 15, 1918, The New York Times published a front page story under the headline, which read in all caps, “DOCUMENTS PROVE LENIN AND TROZKY HIRED BY GERMANS.” Yet, the story relied on documents that were (at the time) suspected of being forgeries and were later proven to be so. Although, as Hamilton notes, historians have established that the Bolsheviks received German funding, the Bolsheviks were not (as the documents alleged) German agents, but rather, communists intent on spreading revolution to Germany and elsewhere. The Sisson Documents, as they came to be called, were named after CPI’s Russian representative Edgar Sisson, who was largely responsible for convincing the Wilson administration that the documents were authentic. Once the government officially authenticated the documents, the CPI declared any deviation from full acceptance of the documents to be un-American. With this looming threat, nearly all of the establishment press complied. The New York Evening Post was “the lone establishment newspaper with temerity to question the documents when they first appeared.”

As aggressively as the United States pursued domestic propagandization of its civilian population, the U.S. Military displayed an odd reluctance to incorporate propaganda in military operations against Germany in World War I. Herbert Blankenhorn is today remembered as “the father of military psychological operations.” However, in World War I, he was derided as “Captain Papers” for wanting to drop leaflets on the German side of the fighting, urging surrender. Only after demonstrating that some German soldiers had surrendered as a result of reading such leaflets did Blankenhorn receive a measure of regard for his efforts in war.

The CPI ceased operations shortly after the official end of the war. Propaganda helped to mask the severity of the war and its death toll. CPI filtered the rationale for entering (and continuing) the war through a lens of unquestioned patriotism. The removal of this filter prompted Americans to reexamine the rationale for the war and the limited gains America realized from the peace agreement. From his wartime experience in serving the military in helping to shape American propaganda, journalist Walter Lippmann came to believe that “public opinion can be manufactured” and that the Wilson administration had succeeded “in creating something that might be called one public opinion all over America.” Because of this, Lippmann came to believe that “it was no longer possible to believe in the original dogma of democracy” in America. Lippman argued that Americans should focus on understanding issues in their local communities rather than risk manipulation by attempting to understand national events.

Government propaganda has continued in the modern age. The Obama administration established a government Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, which encouraged Americans “to behave responsibly” and to make sound decisions, such as “to stop smoking or start a retirement savings program.” The government employed behavioral science research found in the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Hence, the government team became known as “the nudge unit.” Similarly, researchers affiliated with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have conducted neurological research in which researchers “traced blood flow to the brain to measure the effectiveness of messages.” The DARPA research is supposed to be targeted against “foreign enemies.” Likewise, at first glance, government nudge research appears benign. Yet, as Hamilton wisely notes, “nudging and brain study breakthroughs can be repurposed for partisan political propaganda at home.”

Omitted from mention in Hamilton’s book is the Obama administration’s 2013 enactment of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, included as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This legislation removed the legal restraints on the use of government-produced propaganda for a domestic audience. Defenders of the legislation argue that government-produced propaganda is still legally required to be objective and, in essence, can’t really be labelled as propaganda. However, in World War I or now, government propaganda rarely explicitly identifies itself. It’s also hard to imagine that any court would enforce standards of objectivity on government-produced propaganda. Republican Congressman Thomas Massie has introduced legislation calling for the repeal of the 2013 Smith-Mundt Modernization Act. The congressman has noted the following: “I voted against that NDAA, and I offered an amendment to the 2026 NDAA to reinstate the original prohibition, but Speaker Johnson blocked a vote. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act needs to be repealed. Taxpayer-funded fake news should not be used by the federal government to wage influence campaigns against the American people.”

In Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic, Michael Axworthy provides an engaging and informative account of Iran’s history since 1979.

In November of 1977, President Carter welcomed the Shah to the White House. Protesters greeted the Shah outside the White House grounds. William Sullivan, US Ambassador to Iran, “noted with surprise that some of them carried placards with Khomeini’s face.” The placards surprised Queen Farah, unable to “understand why students with a progressive political agenda would take as their hero someone she regarded as a reactionary traditionalist.”

On 7 January 1978, the paper Ettela’at published an article (approved by the Shah) which attacked Khomeini politically and personally. “Many of the religious class were outraged,” and the article ignited waves of protests. Gradually, the upheaval forced formerly apolitical clerics to join Khomeini in opposition to the Shah.

From his exile in Paris, Khomeini kept the protests focused on the removal of the Shah. That an Islamic republic would replace the Shah was a secondary focus. Khomeini remained evasive on how such a republic would govern.

Given Iran’s history, both the Shah and his opposition were suspicious of foreign influence. Believing that he had accomplished so much for Iran, the Shah blamed external manipulation for the revolution. On the side of the revolution, there were fears that a foreign power would intervene to keep the Shah in control.

At first, it appeared that the Islamic Republic’s constitution would be “moderate, democratic, [and] almost secular.” Such was the first draft that Khomeini declared to be “correct.” However, President Abolhasan Bani-Sadr and Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan objected to the constitution “entering into effect” without debate “by an elected body.” This well-intended stance “proved to be a major mistake by the moderates and leftists,” and allowed “radical clerics” to frame the republic’s constitution.

As the debate over the constitution unfolded, a group of students (acting on their own) took control of the US embassy in Tehran. Recognizing the embassy takeover’s political value, Khomeini decided to let the occupation continue, referring to the embassy as a “nest” of spies. Discovered within the embassy were documents showing “contacts between liberal figures and the US government.” The discovery of these documents helped Khomeini to tarnish his political opponents as American sympathizers. The embassy takeover may have helped Khomeini domestically. However, internationally, it ushered Iran into a “twilight zone of diplomatic breakdown and international isolation.”

Believing Iran to be “weakened by revolutionary turmoil,” Saddam Hussein invaded Iran on 22 September 1980. The initial fighting showed the Iraqi air force’s weakness compared to the Iranian air force, flying American F-14s purchased under the Shah. Despite their success, the regime questioned Iranian pilots’ loyalty, since the Shah had been a pilot and especially favored the air force. One pilot expressed that he and his fellow pilots were treated “like CIA agents.”

Iraq received military assistance from France and loans from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Israel and the US covertly supplied Iran with arms. Israel saw Saddam as a more significant threat than Iran, and the US hoped for better relations with Iran. Exposed in 1986 as the Iran-Contra affair, Israel supplied Iran “with much-needed weapons.” In turn, Iran paid Israel, the US resupplied Israel, and Israel channeled “the proceeds of the sales to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.”

In 1982, as Iran and Iraq continued to fight, Saddam suggested that the two countries join “forces against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.” The fighters Iran sent to Lebanon “later became the core of Lebanese Hezbollah.” Along with this organization was the “closely related” Islamic Jihad, consisting of “Shi’as who had been active with the PLO.” In 1983, Islamic Jihad carried out two suicide bombings against the US in Lebanon and one against Israel in Lebanon. The attacks and the Iran-Contra affair’s exposure caused the US to shift its support to Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War.

One of the most controversial aspects of the Iran-Iraq War was Saddam’s use of chemical weapons on Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurds at Halabja. Later in the war, Iranian forces were equipped with gas masks, but many suffered skin and long-term lung damage from mustard gas early in the war. Although it later emerged that only Iraq had used chemical weapons at Halabja, the US, based on “Iraqi intelligence,” stated that “both sides had used chemical weapons around Halabja.”

Near the end of the war, Iraq staged an offensive into Iran using “Iranian exiles” affiliated with the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), an Iranian leftist opposition group. The failed offensive resulted in a purging of MKO members languishing in Iranian prisons. At the same time, younger people who had only passed out MKO literature “were executed along with unrepentant, diehard MKO activists.”

Despite the tremendous toll the war took on Iran, it emerged with a sense of confidence in its independence. Iran now looked to no “other country for support, advice, help, or guidance.” Pride of autonomy “and the anxiety lest the country slip back into dependency go a long way to explain what for many foreigners seems inexplicable about contemporary Iran.”

In 1997, Iran elected Mohammad Khatami, a scholarly man, then “serving as the head of the National Library.” Khatami was a reformist who “in his first term as president” opened “up freedom of speech,” enabling many publications to be “strongly critical of the previous conduct of government.”

Khatami also sought to improve Iran’s relationship with the US. “Iran had been supporting the Northern Alliance” in Afghanistan against the Taliban, supported by “the US, Saudis, and Pakistan.” The US turned against the Taliban and united with the Northern Alliance after the Taliban “refused to render up Al-Qaeda operators connected to the 11 September 2001 attacks.” Iran “facilitated” the cooperation between the US and the Northern Alliance, and granted “permission for overflights by US aircraft.”

Improved US-Iran relations now seemed like a possibility. Instead, in January 2002, President Bush dubbed Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the “Axis of Evil.” In 2003, Iran saw the possibility of “action against Iran” after the toppling of Saddam in Iraq. Working with the Swiss Ambassador in Tehran, Tim Guldimann, Iran prepared a “draft of proposals for negotiation” with the US. The proposal included “the question of Iran’s nuclear” program, “Iran’s support for Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and recognition (in effect) of Israel itself.” Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice “argued for a positive response to the Iranians.” However, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney “vetoed the proposal.”

Khatami’s failed diplomatic overtures to the US helped to embolden his hard-line opponents. Also, Khamtami’s non-confrontational leadership style disheartened his supporters. These factors led to the election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad in 2005, a conservative from “humble rural origins.”

Unlike Khatami, Ahmadinejad embraced confrontation, taking an in-your-face attitude to the US, and openly airing doubts about the Holocaust. In 2009, Iranians “hoped the elections would produce an Iranian leader with a new, positive outlook.” Instead, Ahmadinejad was reelected in what was widely believed to be a rigged outcome. The 2009 election resulted in widespread street protests. Images of the protests and the brutal government crackdown found their way to social media, resulting in the government “closing down telephone and internet communications.”

Since 1979, Iran “has been subject to trade sanctions imposed by the US.” Sanctioned goods still find their way into Iran “via Dubai” from “wealthy Iranians,” or from “trade relations with countries like China and Russia.” The result is that Sepah (Iran’s internal security force) profits from and controls “the flow of goods through a bottleneck.” Additionally, those “mostly closely identified with reform and opposition in Iran, the liberal middle classes, have seen their businesses punished by sanctions.”

“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”

Vanity Fair is perhaps less a place than a mindset of self-striving after that which generally remains elusive. Thackery shows the fragility of status, wealth, and easy friendships based on a person’s assets or place in society. He also shows us that, however great our successes or failures in life, we all pass into death on equal footing.

Thackery generally approaches the subject of faith with a certain reluctance or with a light touch. However, through Miss Crawley’s character, he strikes a more serious tone, showing that skepticism towards faith in times of “health and good spirits” will bring little comfort in times of illness and “dreadful terrors of death.”

All of the above is not to suggest that the novel is all serious. Thackery offers many moments of hilarity and sarcasm. Adopting the style of a background observer of the novel’s numerous social gatherings and encounters, he cuts through every pretense, analyzing good and ill intent.

Vanity Fair is a novel well worth reading. Make time for it.

“Even if we were to fly to the moon, or go down to the bottom of oceans, we would still be men in the heart of a human world. As for those mysterious realities which revealed themselves to our senses -- forces, planets, molecules, waves -- they were hidden by words and protected by the yawning gap of our ignorance. Never would nature deliver up to us her secrets; she had no secrets. We were the ones who invented questions and then formulated the answers to them; in the bottoms of our retorts we would never discover anything but our own thoughts, thoughts that might in the course of centuries multiply, become more complex, be formed into vaster and more subtle systems.”

All Men Are Mortal (1946) is a novel of French existentialism. Fosca, the main character, becomes an immortal man. He shares the story of his centuries of existence with Regina, a young woman preoccupied with the finite nature of life.

Observing centuries of unrealized human dreams of progress, Fosca adopts a mindset of crushing apathy. He is unable to form an opinion about anything. Nothing matters to him. While Fosca faces his immortality with blandness, Regina faces her mortality with horror. She feels powerless to stop the passage of time, leading to its inevitable end, death.

Beauvoir explores the pessimistic philosophy that perhaps best defines French existentialism through the characters of Fosca and Regina. However, through the character of Garnier, she introduces one who sees meaning in the unfulfilled nature of life. “We don’t have to count on a future to give meaning to our acts,” Garnier states. “If that were the case, all actions would be impossible.”

While the novel does meander at times, it offers plenty to ponder. Like other existentialist-oriented novels, it doesn’t provide any ultimate hope beyond death or much encouragement in life. However, it offers a wealth of insight into our existence. Give the book a try.

Augustine is arguably the most influential theologian in Western Christianity. Within Catholicism, Augustine is, of course, Saint Augustine. His writings are a foundational part of Catholic tradition. Yet, Augustine has been highly influential in Lutheran and Reformed (or Calvinist) traditions. Augustine’s writings helped Martin Luther formulate the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith. John Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion relies heavily on citations from Augustine. In its prefatory address to French King Francis, it was to Augustine (and other church fathers) that Calvin appealed to defend the Reformation against charges of novelty or departing from church tradition. In keeping with Augustine’s broad influence, The Enchiridion includes Protestant and Catholic theology and some doctrines unique to Catholicism. While the Enchiridion is primarily a handbook of theology, it also showcases Augustine’s technical ability in philosophy.

The Nature of Evil

Augustine developed the idea that evil has no existence in and of itself. Evil can only exist as a parasite in something good. “What are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations [absences of] of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.” (1) Furthermore, psychologically, evil has a deceptive nature. “When the mind attains the objects of its desire, however hurtful or empty they may be, error prevents it from perceiving their true nature.” This error produces a “foolish joy” (italics in the original) concerning evil. (2) Similarly, Simone Weil captured the sense in which evil is a delusional enjoyment in this thought, “Two conceptions of hell: the ordinary one (suffering without consolation); mine (false beatitude, mistakenly thinking oneself to be in paradise).” (3)

Creation and the Fall

Augustine emphasizes the unchangeable nature of God as the creator in contrast to creation, which is good but not “unchangeably good.” The changeability of creation became apparent in “some of the angels” who “rebelled against God, and were cast down from their heavenly abode.” (4) Likewise, humanity rebelled against God by disobeying his command for them in the Garden of Eden. Death and judgment for all humanity (present and future) resulted from humanity’s rebellion.

Salvation through Christ

Because of his virgin birth, Christ did not carry the guilt of death and judgment. Yet he was fully man and God in that he experienced the full range of human emotions and temptations, but as God, he could not sin. Through his death and resurrection, Christ made salvation possible for humanity. At the same time, death and judgment are still the ends awaiting every human being, “unless he be new born in Christ” through faith. (5) The certainty of death and judgment apart from Christ is difficult to accept, and clearly, many people disbelieve it. But as Pascal remarked, “Let us put on as bold a face as we like: that is the end awaiting the world's most illustrious life.” (6)

The Nature of Christian Righteousness

Augustine underscores broad areas of agreement between Catholic and Protestant Christianity regarding grace, faith, and good works performed after conversion. There is agreement that faith is a gift of God granted by grace and not based on good works performed before conversion. There is also unanimity on the truths that the Christian faith, without good works, is dead and that God’s forgiveness in no way excuses habitual wrongdoing or a lack of ongoing growth in grace as a Christian.

During and after the Reformation, differences emerged between Catholics and Protestants regarding the nature of Christian righteousness. In Catholicism, when a person becomes a Christian, a “righteousness” is conferred upon him that is “merited by Christ.” At the same time, a person receives “an interior sanctifying quality” existing “in the soul itself, which makes it truly just and holy in the sight of God.” (7) The interior sanctifying quality that a person receives is a Christian but also a human righteousness. Because it is a human righteousness, it can be increased. By contrast, Luther's formulation best characterizes the Protestant position: when a person becomes a Christian, the individual is “at once righteous and a sinner.” The person is “righteous in God’s sight because of Christ” and simultaneously “a sinner as measured according to his own merits.” (8) Because a person is declared to be righteous because of the righteousness of Christ, that individual has divine righteousness. Because it is divine, it is impossible for humans to increase it.

While the above discussion may seem like splitting hairs, it can have practical and dramatic implications. Before the Reformation, Luther was a zealous Catholic monk, yet still found himself unable to obtain a clear conscience or to believe that he was forgiven as a Christian. Only by studying Scripture did he reach an epiphany that he was forgiven based on Christ’s righteousness and not his own.

The Nature of Baptism

In Augustine’s time and for many Christians throughout history (and today), baptism was the entry point into Christianity. As Augustine describes it, baptism “indicates our death with Christ to sin, and our resurrection with him to newness of life.” (9) On this point, there is general agreement throughout Christianity. Beyond this, however, there are divergent beliefs regarding baptism.

According to the Catholic understanding of baptism, as Augustine notes, “Infants die only to original sin; those who are older also die to all the sins which their evil lives have added to the sin which they brought with them.” (10)

Lutherans retained baptism's sacramental nature for the forgiveness of sins. However, they did so in keeping with the at-once-righteous-and-a-sinner theology that applied to Lutheran beliefs in general. For Lutherans, “baptism forgives the guilt of original sin, but the sinful nature that remains is real sin.” (11)

In the Reformed tradition, infant baptism is also sacramental but is a sign and a seal of future faith brought to fruition later in life. For adults, Reformed baptism is a sign and a seal of faith already granted.

The Anabaptists emerged during the Reformation as a challenge to Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed traditions. They agreed with the Reformers on the issue of justification by faith. However, they believed that adults baptized as infants should be rebaptized as adults. They held this belief based on Christ’s baptism as an adult and that the baptisms recorded in the New Testament are of adults. Reformers countered these arguments with the argument that whole families were baptized in the New Testament and that it’s reasonable to conclude that infants were included.

The Reformers rejected the Anabaptists' baptismal beliefs based on Scripture and church tradition. However, the Anabaptists' beliefs were also likely dismissed for other reasons. As the Reformation advanced, national governments (and eventually whole countries) declared themselves Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed. In these Christian societies, where everyone was baptized as an infant, baptism was an important organizing function. In this societal context, the Anabaptists’ rejection of infant baptism was anarchical.

Stages of the Christian Life

When Christianity first emerged, as recorded in the New Testament, it was to people hearing the message of the Gospel for the first time. There was an eagerness and urgency to listen and also share the message of this new faith. As Christian history progressed, the problem of passing on the faith to the next generation emerged. This has taken the form of catechism or Sunday school classes in early childhood and young adulthood. The problem is that children brought to church since infancy have never known a life outside a church and its influence. In approaching Christianity and conversion at a young age, they are not making a clean break with a non-Christian life in the way that the earliest Christians did or in the way that adult converts today do.

Augustine speaks of a second stage in the Christian life when a person first becomes aware of sin and plunges headlong into it instead of avoiding it. In the third stage, a person turns to Christ in faith and “lives the life of the just by faith.” Augustine also speaks of those who “have never known the second stage.” Instead, they pass through it and receive “the divine assistance” of faith as soon as they receive knowledge of sin. This is a helpful way of resolving how those raised in a Christian home establish a lasting faith without ever living a life of sin. (12)

Storms Within and Without Will Someday Be Silenced

Rob Norris, a retired Presbyterian pastor in the Washington D.C. area, told a story in a sermon drawn from Victor Hugo’s novel Ninety-Three. At one point in the novel, men are aboard a ship during a violent thunderstorm when a cannon comes loose below deck. The cannon careens back and forth, smashing into the ship’s sides before finally being secured. Applying this story to life, Rob made the point that in our lives, it is sometimes necessary to calm the story raging inside of us in order to face the storm raging outside of us. Augustine points us to a time and place where this will no longer be necessary. In heaven, “no part of our nature shall be in discord with another; but as we shall be free from enemies without, so we shall not have ourselves for enemies within.” (13)

Notes

1. St. Augustine. The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love. Translated by J.B. Shaw. Regnery Publishing, 1961, pp. 11-12.

2. Augustine, The Enchiridion, p. 31.

3. Quoted from Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace.

4. Augustine, The Enchiridion, p. 34.

5. Augustine, The Enchiridion, p. 61.

6. Quoted from Pascal’s Pensées.

7. “Justification.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/0857...

8. Muller, Richard. “simul iustus et peccator” Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms. Baker Books, 2004, p. 283.

9. Augustine, The Enchiridion, p. 52.

10. Augustine, The Enchiridion, p. 53.

11. “Baptism and Original Sin.” Taken from https://wels.net/faq/baptism-and-orig....
Accessed 29 June 2024.

12. Augustine, The Enchiridion, pp. 137-138.

13. Augustine, The Enchiridion, p. 106

The novel under review is titled INCEL, or as I like to call it, my autobiography. I begin with a bit of humor because if readers have encountered the term INCEL, it has been in the form of a MEME or a social media putdown. INCEL stands for an involuntary celibate male. A man (usually younger) would like a wife, girlfriend, or someone to be intimate with, but he cannot attract such a woman. While it is fun to joke about the plight of the INCEL, the reality of hordes of generally miserable young men starved for female attention is one that should elicit alarm, not laughter.

It is sometimes supposed that misogyny unites INCELS. It is as if a group of men has joined forces out of a shared loathing of women. More accurately, INCELS are united by a shared inability to attract females.

If there is one overriding theme of the novel, it is the non-personhood of its main character. By his name, anon, he does not exist in the eyes of humanity. He is forced to contend with his agony in the face of a society indifferent to his struggles and indifferent to him. ARX-HAN does a fine job of depicting the life of anon. He also links the struggles of anon to universal human suffering. It may be that the struggles of the INCEL seem remote from our experience. However, one is reminded of the closing line in Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”

INCEL: The Novel — A Stylistic Masterclass

Before examining the book in greater detail, I must comment on its style. Indie novels have a reputation (sometimes deserved) for being rushed and poorly edited. Such is not the case with the book under review. Great care has been taken to craft every sentence. ARX-HAN demonstrates a mastery of language use.

INCEL is also a novel of ideas, philosophical and especially scientific. ARX-HAN incorporates ideas from various scientific disciplines, such as biology, neuroscience, and especially evolutionary psychology. Readers like me, approaching the book from a liberal arts background, may encounter unfamiliar scientific language. But that’s not a bad thing. It is recommended that non-scientific readers keep Google handy to query unfamiliar terms.

The Characteristics of an INCEL

If there is one overriding characteristic of anon, it is his lack of skill in casual conversation or small talk. Part of this stems from ineptitude, which increases with each unsuccessful encounter with a female. On a deeper level, anon lacks skill in small talk because he does not care about it. He also lacks a desire to associate with others based on his cumulative social failures. When talking with anon, women apply (as anon imagines it) a filtering process by which his lack of skill in small talk is detected. He describes one encounter as follows: “Something in my words triggers the programmatic death of the interaction, and a seemingly promising opportunity disintegrates into ashes.” (1)

A unique sense of fatigue also characterizes the life of an INCEL. He is tired but not from overexertion. He is exhausted because of a sense of lack. His fatigue is due to “something that really should be present, but ultimately is not.” And “there is a particular type of exhaustion that comes from the prolonged absence” of female attention. Over time, this prolonged absence manifests itself in “a progressive load that presses on the structure of your psyche until the walls of reason start to buckle from within.” (2)

The INCEL is also characterized by a need to find validation or acknowledgment of his personhood from others, especially females. This need pushes anon to a level of desperation. In one encounter, anon inwardly observes, “I’m talking to the ninth girl that I’ve approached when my brain catches her staring at me like I’m an actual person.” This female acknowledgment of his personhood creates in anon “a warm, comfortable sort of feeling: the type of smoothly flowing opiate that gently washes over the folds of your cerebral cortex, dipping the whole of your sensorium in the sweet nectar of dopaminergic reward.” Unable to find acknowledgment of his personhood within himself, anon finds it “reflected in the lives of others.” (3)

Closely related to anon’s need for female validation is his sense of neediness and his inability to outwardly mask it behind a facade of indifference. His taller, muscular childhood friend, Jason, can attract women with seemingly little effort. Jason adopts a front of indifference toward women, masking any emotional need. In approaching women, anon attempts to mirror Jason’s attitude, but he is unable to hide his neediness because he is starving for female attention.

A pornography addiction also characterizes the life of anon. ARX-HAN skillfully dissects the psychology of porn addiction as a compulsion. “If a sense of agency is the feeling that you have when you are making choices, a compulsion is its opposite: a behavioral loop that’s achieved a relative degree of autonomy within the space of your mind, a backroom deal between your base desires and your better self.” (4)

Perhaps the most significant characteristic of anon’s life is his sense of shared misery with others. In Sartre’s play No Exit, three individuals die and go to hell. Sartre imagines hell as a hotel room. These three individuals are together in one room for all eternity, leading to the famous line of the play, “Hell is other people.” For anon, though, “the best thing about hell is that it contains other people.” Through hours spent online, he shares the misery of others. (5)

The novel has much more to ponder than what is presented here. INCEL is a stylishly written novel that skillfully connects the suffering of one individual to universal human suffering. It is not only a novel worth reading, but one that is worthy of careful reading.

Notes

ARX-HAN, INCEL: A Novel. POSITIVE XP LLC, 2023, p.11.

ARX-HAN, INCEL, p. 161.

ARX-HAN, INCEL, p. 187.

ARX-HAN, INCEL, p. 197.

ARX-HAN, INCEL, p. 200.

The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky’s last major novel, and the work established him not only as a great Russian writer but as one of the great writers in world literature. The book incorporates themes from his earlier novels but more fully develops them. It contains the ideas with which he is most closely associated and perhaps his most famous fictional story, The Grand Inquisitor.

Dostoevsky’s Challenge to Western Ideas

As with his earlier novels, the adverse impact of Western philosophy on Russian Orthodox Christian society remains a preoccupation in The Brothers Karamazov. As an overriding theme, the book considers the influence of atheistic socialism and its attendant nihilism. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky focused on a young student becoming radicalized by nihilistic ideas. The Brothers Karamazov focuses on the influence of these ideas on the Russian working class.

Portrayed as an atheist who denies individual immortality, Ivan Karamazov holds the philosophy that “the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the complete opposite of the previous religious law, and egoism, even if it comes to crime, must not only be permitted to men, but even recognized as necessary, as the most rational and, in effect, the noblest outcome demanded by this situation.” (1) As a shorthand for this thinking, Dostoevsky adopts the phrase “everything is permitted,” meaning if God does not exist, then all moral restraints are lifted.

Ivan’s nihilism influences the thinking of a household servant, Smerdyakov. As a cold theorist, Ivan views Smerdyakov as “the cannon fodder of progress.” (2) Such chilly rationality calls to mind the white Marxist in Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, who views black agitators as expendable within the revolutionary framework of Marxist theory.

Dostoevsky invites readers to consider the distinction between a person considering radical ideas as an armchair thinker versus someone who lives according to such ideas. Ivan asserts nihilistic thinking as pure theory without considering its practical implications. Ivan’s theoretical neutrality is reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson’s thought in Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson asserted, “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Such thinking prompted Reverend William Linn to respond, “Let my neighbor once persuade himself that there is no God, and he will soon pick my pocket, and break not only my leg but my neck. If there be no God, there is no law.” (3)

The Grand Inquisitor and The Russian Monk

The Grand Inquisitor portion of The Brothers Karamazov is the most well-known portion of the novel. Indeed, as Michael Katz notes in the Afterword, The Grand Inquisitor has been published as a standalone book, leading readers to conclude that the story represents the sum of Dostoevsky’s thinking on religious faith. As Michael Katz notes, Dostoevsky intended The Russian Monk portion of the novel to be the answer of faith to the radical skepticism of the Grand Inquisitor.

In writing The Grand Inquisitor, Dostoevsky drew on his journey from unbelief to Christian faith, noting that “it is not like a child that I believe in Christ and confess Him. My hosanna has come forth from the crucible of doubt.” Dostoevsky would say of The Grand Inquisitor, “You might search Europe in vain for so powerful an expression of atheism.” (4) Indeed, Dostoevsky worried that the story was such a powerful “denial of God” that it would overwhelm The Russian Monk as a response. (5)

The Grand Inquisitor

Ivan narrates the story of the Grand Inquisitor to his brother Alyosha. The story is set in the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Christ momentarily returns to earth, performs miracles, and then is imprisoned by The Grand Inquisitor.

The Grand Inquisitor accuses Christ of abandoning humanity. Unlike Christ, who was able to resist the temptation of the devil to turn stone into bread, society cannot live “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (King James Version, Matthew 4.4). People are overwhelmed by a need for temporal satisfaction, yet they crave forgiveness of sin. In response to this need, a future society will emerge where people indulge in the flesh and are granted forgiveness by a select group of overlords. These state guardians will control every aspect of the people’s lives. The rulers, hardened in atheism and aligned with the devil, will know that the faith of the people is based on lies. In such a society, the people will be blissfully ignorant and happy in their indulgent lives.

The Grand Inquisitor finishes questioning Christ and demands a response. Christ “approaches the old man in silence and kisses him softly on his withered and bloodless lips. That is his only answer.” The Grand Inquisitor angrily sends Christ away, ordering him never to return. Then Dostoevsky writes, “The kiss burns in his heart, but the old man holds fast to his idea.” Dostoevsky depicts a person so hardened in unbelief that nothing can persuade him, not even receiving the forgiveness and love of Christ directly. (6)

The Russian Monk

In contrast to the pride and haughtiness of The Grand Inquisitor, The Russian Monk is humble and generous in spirit. In this portion of the novel, Dostoevsky portrays the life and teachings of a fictional Russian Orthodox priest, Father Zosima. He is especially concerned with ministering to the common people of Russia in his vocation as a priest. Father Zosima realizes that atheism has infiltrated the minds of upper-class Russians. Rather than trying to convince through arguments, the priest believes, “Only the people and its future spiritual strength will convert our atheists.” (7)

Father Zosima recognizes the scientific advancements in society. While these trends have allowed the wealthy to “regard themselves as above God’s people,” this has led to “isolation and spiritual suicide.” As for the poor, “envy and insatiability of needs are drowned in drunkenness.” Foreseeing possible trouble for Russian society, the priest notes that “soon instead of wine,” the poor “will drink blood; they are being brought to that.” (8) Despite the warning signs of social unrest, society will realize that “There is equality only in the spiritual dignity of man.” In the end, Russia “will preserve the image of Christ, and it will shine forth like a precious diamond to the whole world.” (9)

Ivan Karamazov and the Devil

In 1862, Dostoevsky traveled through Western Europe and later published his thoughts on what he witnessed in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. He visited London’s Crystal Palace, a vast glass structure showcasing the technological advancements of the day. Dostoevsky was overcome by its Tower of Babel-like nature as he took in the Crystal Palace. “You feel a terrible force that has united all these people here, who come from all over the world, into a single herd...You feel that it would require a great deal of eternal spiritual resistance and denial not to succumb, not to surrender to the impression, not to bow down to fact, and not to idolize Baal, that is, not to accept what is as your ideal.” (10)

Continuing to develop the idea of an exclusive focus on the here and now in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky imagines the devil appearing to Ivan Karamazov. Instead of the Rolling Stones’ “man of wealth and taste,” Dostoevsky imagines the devil as appearing to “have gradually fallen into poverty and had turned into something like a sponger of the best class.” The devil reflects Ivan’s guilty conscience and an actual being. He torments Ivan with the consequences of his everything is permitted philosophy and his authorship of The Grand Inquisitor. Trying to draw Ivan further into a labyrinth of despair, the devil gloats about a “new era” in which “the man-god will appear. From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, as each day passes man will experience such joy and exaltation in his accomplishment that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven.” (11) In his portrait of Ivan’s vision of the devil, Dostoevsky shows the pull and ultimate emptiness of a focus on the here and now. He also demonstrates the psychological consequences of adhering to radical nihilist philosophy.

The Brothers Karamazov is one of the world’s great novels. Few novels come close to its depth of content and the psychological range of its characters. While it is a Russian novel preoccupied with issues of its time and place, it deals with lasting issues in a way that appeals to readers worldwide.

Notes

1. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by Michael R. Katz. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2003, p. 84.

2. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p. 160.

3. Allen, Brooke. “Jefferson the Skeptic.” The Hudson Review. vol. LIX, no. 2, Summer 2006. pp. 193-217. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20464555

4. A Summary of the Grand Inquisitor. https://web.pdx.edu/~tothm/religion/Summary%20of%20The%20Grand%20Inquisitor.pdf. Accessed 18 February 2024.

5. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p. 898.

6. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p. 311.

7. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p. 348.

8. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p. 369.

9. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p. 371.

10. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. Translated by David Patterson. Northwestern University Press, 1988, p. 37.

11. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p. 751.

Iran Between Two Revolutions is a landmark study. In it, Ervand Abrahamian provides a well-researched and well-argued account of Iran’s history from the nineteenth century to the fall of the Shah in 1979.

The nineteenth century marked a shift in Iran’s history, ending a period of relative isolation. In part, this would be forced upon the country by foreign invasions from Russia and Britain, who compelled the Shahs of Iran’s Qajar dynasty (1789-1925) to make significant economic concessions. From its dominant position militarily, Britain dismissed Iranian tariffs on imports as “disrupting the natural laws of free trade.”

Rather than protecting Iran’s industry, Naser al-Din Shah (1848-1896) sought to attract foreign investment. Russia invested in Iran’s telegraph, railroad, roads, and fishing industries. The British secured deals in Iranian banking, mines, and telegraph lines.

The Shahs of the Qajar dynasty faced the balancing act of appeasing foreign investors while placating domestic merchants. Naser al-Din Shah’s attempt in 1891 to provide the British with a “fifty-year monopoly over the distribution and exportation of tobacco” caused a general strike in the leading bazaars. The eagerness of the Shah to make foreign concessions and the expense of domestic merchants prompted a Qazvin merchant to ask, “Have the people of Iran died that the government is auctioning away their inheritance?”

These grievances (and others) led to Iran’s Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911). Although the constitution was to have a lasting impact in Iran, internal infighting and conflicts over the role of the Shah in the new government led to civil war, prompting the military intervention of the British and Russians. The conflict also led to the military and political rise of Reza Shah (1925-1941), who declared that a “constitutional monarchy was the best bulwark against Bolshevism.”

Reza Shah greatly expanded Iran’s military and government bureaucracy and tried to limit foreign economic influence, “although failing to reduce the influence of the Iran-Anglo oil company.” He also became the wealthiest man in the country and acquired (by legal or illegal means) vast landholdings, “which financed the establishment of royal hotels, casinos, palaces, companies, charities,” and foundations. Attempting to Westernize Iran, the Shah mandated the forced unveiling of women. For men, the Shah required the wearing of European-brimmed hats, intentionally selected “to interfere with the Muslim rule of prayer, which requires the faithful to touch the ground with their foreheads.” The unpopular Shah’s reign ended in 1941 with the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, with the rationale of “opening a new corridor to Russia, eliminating German agents, and safeguarding oil installations.”

Between 1941 and 1953, Iran enjoyed a contentious but open and democratic government. Yet while Mohammad Reza Shah (1941-1979) remained formally out of power, he retained influence and authority. Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (1951-1953) sought to limit the Shah’s authority over the military, aiming to make the monarchy purely ceremonial, as in Britain. Mosaddegh also sought to nationalize Iran’s oil industry and reduce the size of the military. In doing so, he united a “secret committee” of “disgruntled” Iranian military officers, the British secret service, and the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Mosaddegh was removed from power through a military coup.

With help from the CIA, FBI, and Israeli intelligence, the Shah established an internal security force known as SAVAK. Its agents and spies allowed him to root out his opposition, especially the Marxists Tudeh Party. The Shah’s power would remain relatively unchallenged until 1960, when deficit spending (started in 1954) began to weaken the economy. Seeing “liberal reforms as the best guarantees against communist revolutions,” the Kennedy administration “offered $85 million” on the condition that the Shah institute land and governmental reforms. The ensuing political liberalization permitted protests, which in 1963 introduced Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini as a leading critic of the Shah.

Khomeini had a talent for selecting issues with broad appeal and avoiding other issues. He avoided issues like “land reform and women’s rights.” Still, he attacked the Shah on “corruption, rigging elections, violating constitutional laws, stifling the press and the political parties, destroying the independence of the university, [and] “neglecting the economic needs of merchants.” Forced into exile in 1963, Khomeini began calling for the Shah’s removal in the late 1960s.

In exile, Khomeini continued to talk in noncommital “generalities of throwing out the imperialists and granting “Islamic justice” for “the poor, helping farmers,” [and] “protecting working masses.” In public, “Khomeini did not publicly refer to his work on Islamic government; on the contrary, his entourage later disclaimed this work, arguing that it was either a SAVAK forgery or the rough notes of a student listener.” To Iranian high school and university students, Khomeini’s justice rhetoric sounded similar to that of Ali Shariati.

Ali Shariati, a “Paris-educated sociologist,” became a popular lecturer in Iran from 1967 to 1972. Shariati’s Islamic-Marxist thought has arguable similarities to the liberation theology of black nationalists in the States and Catholicism in Central America. Shariati rejected the notion of Iran returning to its pre-Islamic past. Iran needed to return to its Islamic roots. For Shariati, this faith was not about Islamic beliefs “in God, the soul and the afterlife, but rather the willingness to take concrete action for the truth.” SAVAK arrested Shariati in 1972, but transcriptions and tapes of his lectures circulated widely among students.

Oil revenues from the mid-1960s to the 1970s enabled rapid economic growth and helped the Shah to keep his critics at bay. Unlike Mosaddegh, the Shah did not insist on nationalizing Iranian oil. He agreed to a profit-sharing arrangement “with a consortium formed of British Petroleum, the former owners of AIOC [Iran-Anglo], and eight other European and American oil companies.” Billions in oil profits helped to expand Iran’s military, railways, roads, and cities.

While the economic growth was impressive, it was also uneven. Tehran’s rapid growth created problems of overcrowding. And, “despite the vast oil revenues, Tehran, a city of over 4 million, still had no proper sewage system, no subway system, and no proper public transport system.” Adding royal insult to these injuries, the Shah’s younger brother suggested that those unhappy with Tehran’s traffic should travel by helicopter.

As oil revenues continued to pour in, political storm clouds began to appear on the horizon. Faced with international charges of human rights abuses, the Shah balanced appeasing human rights critics, permitting greater political dissent, and maintaining an image of stability to allies. On top of this, the Shah managed inflation by significantly slowing construction projects, thereby harming the urban working class.

In 1975, the Shah made Iran a one-party state with the establishment of the Resurgence party. A party document declared the Shah to be a “teacher and spiritual leader” who “guides the spirit and thought and hearts of people.” In a 1976 interview, the Shah declared that “no other nation” had given its leader “such a carte-blanche.”

The political fallout of the Resurgence party and its overarching authority helped to undermine the Shah. “By the end of 1975, twenty-two prominent poets, novelists, professors, theater directors, and filmmakers were in jail for criticizing the regime.” Also, the Shah lost the support of the bazaar class “by setting up state corporations to import and distribute basic foods, especially wheat, sugar, and meat.”

As the street demonstrations started, the Shah struggled to maintain authority over the army. Some in the military eventually sided with the revolution. However, it was the army’s decision late in the revolution to declare neutrality that was arguably the most decisive factor in the Shah’s downfall.

All in all, this is an excellent book deserving of a wide audience. I hope my summary did it justice.

In American Transcendentalism: A History, Philip Gura provides a comprehensive study of the origins, varieties, and influences of transcendentalism in America. Gura shows transcendentalism to be a unique blend of European and American thought.

Transcendentalism emerged against the backdrop of New England Calvinist Christianity. Many transcendentalists were Unitarians. They rejected the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, and they also opposed (in varying degrees) traditional Christian beliefs, especially the understanding of sin, the miracles of Christ, and the authority of Scripture.

Transcendentalism deconstructed historic Christianity and constructed a new faith. Based on John Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding (1689), ideas were not innate but were solely the product of individual experience. This idea was blended with German higher criticism of the Bible, which viewed Scripture as primarily cultural. Hence, the Bible became mostly limited to its time and place and the experience of its writers.

Since ideas were drawn solely from individual experience, transcendentalists recognized no authority to bind the conscience beyond that of the individual. Nature informed the conscience. Regardless of education or background, all people could develop their conscience.

This development of conscience derived in part from transcendentalists’ variations on three aspects of traditional Christianity: the fallen state of creation, general revelation, and the miracles of Christ. In historic Christianity, the general revelation of God’s existence through nature is a gateway belief intended to lead a person to the knowledge of God and the need for redemption through faith in Christ. Transcendentalists made the general revelation of nature a primary article of faith, but its focus was now on the self, not God.

In keeping with New England Christianity, some transcendentalists saw nature as fallen or at least partially so. Some also believed in the miracles of Christ. Historic Christianity teaches that Christ’s miracles are evidence of his divinity and authority over his creation. In contrast, transcendentalists saw Christ accomplishing miracles through his humanity. Through his developed conscience and insight into nature, Christ performed the seemingly miraculous.

Each person had the same capacity that Christ had to develop consciousness and insight into nature. The idea was for the individual to return to the original language of nature. Johann Gottfried Herder’s The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry (1782) was an influential back-to-nature text for some transcendentalists.

Emerson, perhaps the most significant voice in transcendentalism, took the philosophy a step further removed from Christianity. He saw nature as pure, while other transcendentalists saw it as corrupt to a degree. Emerson affirmed the miracles of Christ as genuine, but no more so than the daily miracle of a sunrise. While transcendentalists in general de-personalized God, Emerson denied “Personality to God,” as he wrote in his journal.

Transcendentalists also differed on the emphasis of the movement. Some emphasized the individualistic nature of the thought. Others saw the need to organize collectives to influence society in general.

The introspective side of transcendentalism was prominent in Emerson’s Nature (1836) and Thoreau’s Walden (1854). Introspection was the emphasis of The Dial (1840-1844) -- a transcendentalist journal featuring the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and others. Emerson’s controversial 1938 address at Harvard Divinity School helped to propel his career as a lecturer as well as the inward aspects of transcendentalist thought.

As Emerson turned inward, former Unitarian George Ripley (1802-1880) turned outward in establishing Brook Farm (1841-1846), a cooperative transcendentalist community in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a Brook Farm resident. Hawthorne’s experiences at Brook Farm are the subject of his novel The Blithedale Romance (1852).

Brook Farm was modeled in part according to the utopian socialist philosophy of French philosopher Charles Fourier (1772-1837). He imagined cooperative living and working communities called phalansteries. Fourier envisioned a worldwide network of phalansteries all linked together in a spirit of harmony.

Although Emerson did not endorse Brook Farm or similar communities, the events of the time persuaded both Emerson and Thoreau to move beyond the introverted side of transcendentalism. In 1862, Emerson delivered an address at the Smithsonian in which he called slavery a “destitution” and urged its abolition.

The Mexican War (1846-1848) and its implications for the spread of slavery in new territories drove Thoreau to write Resistance to Civil Government in 1849. Thoreau’s refusal to pay the poll tax in support of the War only cost him a night in jail and a small fine. However, his protest proved more influential than his better-known writings.

In the decades following the Civil War in the States, transcendentalism gradually lost influence. Science became less focused on self-enlightenment and more focused on classification and analysis along evolutionary lines. Transcendentalists registered a protest against this materialism, but it proved to be a faint effort. The scientific landscape had shifted, as had theological assumptions. Transcendentalism lacked its former opposition. Higher criticism of the Bible was no longer revolutionary. The belief in total human depravity that had sustained New England Calvinism had given way to a belief in sunny optimism.

On the plus side, the transcendentalist belief in individual freedom of conscience helped to further the cause of religious liberty and human rights. The transcendentalist opposition to slavery and the work of transcendentalist Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) in urging prison reform in New York City are lasting influences for good.

In assessing transcendentalism, on the downside, the hyper-focus of individualism within the new faith encouraged an unhealthy every-person-for-himself outlook. Furthermore, although transcendentalism purported to be a creed for everyone, it was sometimes conveyed in an esoteric language accessible only to the initiated.

Lastly, Gura argues that Brook Farm and other cooperative living and work environments failed because of the individualism of market capitalism in America. The reality is that collective dreams for humanity underestimate the dark sides and unpredictability of human nature. Or, as Dostoevsky put it in Crime and Punishment, “the phalanstery is ready, indeed, but your human nature is not ready for the phalanstery.”

The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. In this tragic epic, John Steinbeck tells the tale of tenant farming families driven off lands in Oklahoma by the harsh dustbowl conditions, which had rendered the land unworkable. Drawn by the prospect of good-paying work, the families make the long, arduous trip to California in rickety cars filled with all their possessions.

Steinbeck vividly captures the migrants’ journey on Route 66 to California. There is a sociological hierarchy of travelers and businesses along the highway. The migrants with their worn-out cars and little money are at the bottom of the social ladder and are generally unwelcome by roadside business owners. Truck drivers are rough-and-tumble blue collar but have money to spend, which they do at local greasy spoon diners. Next up on the ladder are travelling white collar couples heading to California for vacation and perhaps to make business connections. At the top of the social ladder is the lone luxury traveler, who zooms along the highway in a Lincoln Zephyr.

Instead of finding the good life in California, the families find hostility. The newcomers face pejorative ridicule and are called “Okies.” The migrants also find little prospect of steady work in their new home. Taking advantage of the labor supply and migrants’ desperation, local farmers conspire to keep wages low. Locals also conspire to keep workers from organizing in any meaningful way.

The migrants brought their Okie culture with them to California. Steinbeck shares tales of music played at roadside camps along the highway and camps for workers in California. Camp-dwellers played the guitar, the fiddle, and especially the inexpensively purchased harmonica. Bakersfield, California, would become a vibrant center of country music, showing the influence of Okie culture.

Along with their music, the migrants also brought their Christian faith. Many of the migrants were adherents of an evangelical, holiness, or Pentecostal-type of faith. Steinbeck’s portrayal of migrants’ faith is the novel’s weakest point. Migrant preachers are portrayed as financial exploiters. Laypeople are depicted as self-righteously condemning others or as introspectively tormenting and condemning themselves. No one is shown to express thankfulness to God for having found work or having survived the long and dangerous journey across the California desert.

Perhaps most jarring in Steinbeck’s portrayal of the migrants’ faith is the character of Casy, the preacher who “ain’t a preacher no more” because of his skepticism. Readers are asked to believe (the unlikely scenario) that Casy has gradually abandoned his faith after holding lengthy talks with himself on the Oklahoma plains. When asked to pray at the bedside of a dying man, Casy limply argues that he “don’ know what to pray for or who to pray to.” Such a skeptical abstraction sounds more like the musings of a German philosopher than a country parson. It is out of place at best. Furthermore, whatever personal doubts a rural pastor might have, these would most likely be set aside in the interests of ministering to those in need.

The novel is perhaps at its literary best early in the story. Tenent farmers driven off their Oklahoma lands blame local owners, who in turn blame local bankers, and who blame finance companies on the East Coast. The literary effect is similar to the main character in Kafka’s The Trial, who desperately attempts to find the real enemy, even as the elusive, powerful authority of the law envelops his life.

As the story progresses, Steinbeck seems unsure who to blame for the Okies’ hunger and misery. The Okies’ makeshift camps are dubbed “Hoovervilles,” presumably as a swipe at President Hoover’s economic policies. Elsewhere, businessmen vacationing in California are depicted as unethical and critical of President Franklin Roosevelt. The title of the novel is an apparent reference to Revelation 14, where God’s judgment at the second coming of Christ is symbolically represented as the grapes of wrath. By contrast, Steinbeck envisions a wrathful migrant uprising against California farmers who burn produce, throw away potatoes, or slaughter pigs to keep farm prices stable. “In the souls of the people,” Steinbeck writes, “the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” The problem is that California farmers were not acting as independent, greedy capitalists. Instead, they were destroying their crops or livestock as part of a New Deal farm program to stabilize farm prices under the Roosevelt administration.

Read as part of American history and an important landmark in American literature, The Grapes of Wrath still has a lot to offer. However, as a novel that provides deep reflections on the problem of evil in the world, it falls short of great novels such as The Brothers Karamazov.

In Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition, historian W.J. Rorabaugh provides readers with a study that is both perceptive and readable. At its best, it provides moments of rare insight, while at its worst, it presents ill-considered opinions that are out of place in a scholarly historical work. Unlike other works of social history, it presents evidence not in isolation but against the framework of major historical events in American history. Rorabaugh’s study largely concentrates on early America, while taking later events into consideration as appropriate.

Rorabaugh pinpoints several reasons why the consumption of a particular alcoholic beverage increased or decreased in early America. He also shows why Americans were driven to drink in excess in group gatherings. What remains arguably elusive, despite Rorabaugh’s efforts, is what compelled then (and now) Americans to binge drink by themselves.

Rorabaugh argues that Americans ultimately embraced temperance as an escape valve, with abstention filling the void that alcohol once filled. The temperance movement successfully aligned itself with the economic and religious trends of the times. While the temperance movement was successful in curbing alcohol consumption (especially consumption of distilled spirits), it was ultimately unsuccessful in reducing binge drinking.

In its closing chapter, Alcoholic Republic goes off the rails from an interpretive standpoint. Rorabaugh attempts to tie the temperance movement and popular evangelical faith in early America to a myriad of later historical events in nineteenth and even twentieth-century America. This portion of the book reads more like a social media or blog post instead of a scholarly finding.

Taking into account some reservations, Alcoholic Republic is a readable and unusually perceptive study.

New Testament scholar Larry Hurtado’s book Destroyer of the gods is a carefully argued and convincing work. As he deftly shows, it is easy to underestimate the radical change that Christianity wrought on the world. A significant portion of the religious and cultural landscape in Western countries can be attributed to the historical influence of Christianity. It is not necessary (as Hurtado notes) to be a Christian to acknowledge this. One can accept it simply as a matter of historical and cultural fact while distancing oneself from the personal acceptance of actual Christian beliefs.

While early Christianity reflected the influence of Judaism, it was distinct from it. And while there are minor parallels between Christianity and pagan mystery religions and philosophical schools, these are easily exaggerated. Christianity was an altogether new religious and cultural phenomenon. It was a new identity, faith, and a new way of life.

In modern times, people approach a religious faith as a body of belief that they voluntarily embrace. In the Roman world, religion was inextricably tied to ethnicity and family. It was assumed that dutiful Romans would participate in the worship of the household gods. It was further expected that citizens would join with others in their community in acknowledging local deities. Citizens were also expected to participate in worshiping the national Roman gods. Romans largely tolerated Jewish monotheism as an ethnic distinctive. Christianity emerged as a radically monotheistic faith that transcended locality and ethnicity. Today (as Hurtado notes), when people express disbelief in God, they do so in Christian monotheistic terms by denying belief in a God, not many gods.

As Augustine pointed out in City of God, for a pagan Roman, there was almost no area of daily life that was left unimpacted by the invocation of a god. Each deity had its own sphere of influence. A person acknowledged a deity to curry favor within that sphere of influence. If a person ignored a deity (or somehow combined all deities as a convenience), he risked incurring the anger of the deity (or deities) left unacknowledged.

While (as Hurtado notes) invocation of gods was a constant preoccupation for a Roman, it was as part of a religion that largely restricted itself to this ritualistic acknowledgement by which individuals were either helped or hindered by the gods. Beyond this transactional relationship, the gods were indifferent to humanity, and individuals did not relate to the gods through a personal faith. The gods were not looked to for salvation in the afterlife. Religion was primarily confined to this world. Nor were the gods concerned with the personal moral behavior of humanity. Morality, or how to live the good life, was largely confined to philosophy, not religion. In modern times, it is generally assumed that religious faith governs moral behavior and is concerned with the afterlife. But these are assumptions inherited from Christianity and its influence on society.

Christianity also differed sharply from Roman pagan religion in that the tenets of its beliefs and instructions on how to live were communicated to adherents in written form. Romans (mostly upper-class Romans) who followed a philosophical school did so by reading philosophy in book form in a scroll format. However, Roman religion was largely ritualistic and non-textual. Pagan priests consulted the Sibylline books, but the actual content of the books was kept hidden from ordinary Romans. By contrast, early Christianity communicated its beliefs and instructions for living through writings that were read in churches wherever they may have gathered. With literacy being uncommon in the Roman world, a person was selected to read in church gatherings to those who (largely) couldn’t read for themselves. The writings read in these early church gatherings provided the basis for what would become the New Testament. Christians wrote many of their writings in a codex format, with individual pages stitched together in a way that anticipated the modern book format.

Within the culture of pagan Rome, wives, children, and slaves assumed the religious identity of the household. Christianity changed this by addressing wives, children, and slaves as individuals capable of having their own faith and living according to it. As Hurtado notes, the New Testament’s “direct address to these various subordinate groups is a distinctively Christian innovation.”

In modern times, Christianity is sometimes derided as patriarchal. However, the New Testament taught that husbands and wives were held to the same standards of marital faithfulness. Roman wives were expected to be faithful to their husbands. Roman society disapproved of married men having sex with wives of similar status or “freeborn virgins.” However, for Roman husbands, “other kinds of sexual activity were openly tolerated, and even encouraged. These included sex with courtesans and prostitutes and also sex with boys, typically slave boys.” Roman society viewed these sexual encounters as an outlet for married men to keep them away from married women. By contrast, sex within marriage was the outlet for Christian couples, as the New Testament encouraged couples not to withhold sex from each other.

In modern times, children are (rightly) protected from sexual exploitation. Regardless of one's faith (or lack thereof), society is in agreement on this. It is easy to assume that this has always been a general point of consensus within society. Such is not the case, as Hurtado clearly demonstrates. Within “the Roman era,” writes Hurtado, “the sexual use of children, including young adolescents and also younger children, was widely tolerated and even celebrated lyrically by some pagan writers of the day, such as Juvenal, Petronius, Horace, Strato, Lucian, and Philostratus.” Christianity roundly condemned such practices as abhorrent. Early Christian writers of the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas, argues one study, developed language in Greek (where such language had previously not existed in Greek) to condemn the sexual abuse of children.

Modern society also (correctly) protects infants from physical harm. Once again, because of the influence of Christianity, it is easy to assume that this has always been the case. However, pagan Rome widely accepted the practice of infant exposure, whereby unwanted babies (especially girls) were left abandoned to the elements, wild animals, or found by strangers to be raised until they could be sold as slaves or prostitutes. It was not, as Hurtado notes, that Roman families were heartless and devoid of affection for family members. But in the same letter in which a father expressed affection for his wife and child, he issues these instructions to his pregnant wife: “[I]f it is a boy, let it be, if it is a girl, cast it out.” Early Christian writers, such as Justin Martyr, condemned the practice of infant exposure. Hermas, the writer of the early Christian work, the Shepherd of Hermas, was an apparent victim of infant exposure. Providentially, Hermas was “sold to Rhoda, the Christian woman who features among the characters” in the Shepherd of Hermas.

Destroyer of the gods is a very well-researched and well-argued book. As shown, Hurtado demonstrates how much of what has always been assumed to be true in society is only widely agreed upon because of the influence of Christianity. Whether one accepts the faith claims of Christianity, the profound change it wrought in Roman society is one that cannot be ignored or explained away.