“Every political regime contains within the seeds of its own destruction.” While reviewing Paul Rahe’s new book, I jotted down this line because of the truth behind the statement. Among my many notes taken, I jotted down a number of Rahe’s clever insights. I find it good practice to not only make notes when reading historical works, but to pull down the fruits of others’ mental labors.
Having read Rahe’s previous book, “Sparta’s Sicilian Proxy War,” I anticipated finding a cluster of insights. What I didn’t anticipate after having completed his most recent work is how that subtle, yet finely crafted line, written in the early pages, was a foreshadowing of what would take place several hundred pages later. This long connection over the arc of the book demonstrated that Rahe, one of America’s most accomplished historians, doesn’t waste words—even for the sake of making an insightful statement.
