America’s founders used Rome as a model and a warning: they wanted us to become an empire, as Rome had, without losing free government, as Rome did. How are we doing? Cullen Murphy gives a thoughtful, entertaining look around.
This is a lovely book—elegant but playful, as reasonable as it is amiable. If you want to understand where America stands in the world today, read this book. It may be the most important thing written about the U.S. government in many years.”
Cullen Murphy has written a book of remarkable richness. A brisk, learned, and highly entertaining tour of the last three millennia, Are We Rome? imbues readers with both foreboding and hope. And it serves as an urgent, ever-so-timely reminder that what we cherish in America will only be lasting if we make it so.
How deeply embedded in our culture is the question this book asks? A few days after Cullen Murphy’s book arrived, my 12-year-old daughter asked me during a car ride: “Dad, are we Rome?” Excitedly — parents love to have ready answers to hard questions — I told her about this elegant, learned, and graceful book that offers wise analysis and shrewd prescriptions. We could be Rome, Murphy answers, but we don’t have to be if we “focus on the handful of big factors that are substantially within our control.” Read in the light of the mess we’re in, this is a disturbing book brimming with hope.
Are We Rome? is just about a perfect book. Cullen Murphy is deeply knowledgeable about the classical world, but his erudition is presented with a sly and witty touch. He is equally sophisticated about modern politics and the real strengths and weaknesses of American culture and the American model. I wish every politician would spend an evening with this book. Since the beginning Americans have nervously compared themselves to Rome. I don’t think the exercise has ever been as instructive or entertaining as what Cullen Murphy has produced.
