Book excerpt: This is a work vast in scale, soaring in its scholarly ambition, and magnificent . . . in its achievement. The author's command of the primary sources is staggering in breadth and depth, deftly orchestrated and rich with insight. . . . Deploying an avalanche of evidence. . . Rahe shows how alien the modern project, in all its diverse versions, was to the classics as well as the Bible.--Thomas L. Pangle, Political Theory