Required Reading

For anyone as fascinated

by Roman antiquity and

the American founding

as I am.

There is currently only

one comment on the book on Amazon.

So hurry up, purchase a copy, read it, and post more.

This book goes beyond the lessons drawn from the structure of Roman government that impacted the American founding and actually does a good job of drawing parallels to how the Roman Republic and Roman Empire managed their affairs with other nations at the time. It is the first serious work of which I'm aware that does this in such a way as to provide credible comparisons to (and lessons for) the ways in which the United States intends to conduct its own foreign affairs. The concluding chapters highlight some pretty cool insights into how to go about dealing with religious fanaticism; these are drawn from Rome's earlier and somewhat longstanding friendship with the Jews - an alliance that turned sour and disintegrated completely when religious ideals took on a nationalistic sense of mission that threatened Rome's interests throughout its own sphere of influence.

Thomas Madden does a fascinating job of tying this together with the request by the earliest rulers of modern Saudi Arabia for American military aid - a request that foreshadowed a relationship that has lasted nearly a century. Much like the Hasmoneans that came before him, Ibn Saud succeeded in consolidating his kingdom in the face of a crumbling Near Eastern empire, and although the threat of the Ottomans was more effectively neutralized relative to the more powerful Seleucids defeated by Judah the Maccabee, the military alliances they each sought with what would soon become the strongest powers of the time yield powerfully similar narratives. Madden concludes, as have many others, that subtracting the religious equation from the political interests of the governments in the region is the proper course to pursue. And although he is not that much closer to describing how exactly this will or should occur, the rich history he describes at least gives us an indispensable understanding of how America can better interpret her own role in relation to the actions of her allies, her adversaries and the venerable antagonists who reluctantly, and sometimes petulantly, tolerate her kind protection if not always her own requests and advice.