Against Throne and Altar

Paul A. Rahe holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. in Litterae Humaniores from University of Oxford, and a Ph.D. in Ancient History from Yale University. He is the author, most recently, of Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville on the Modern Prospect (2009) and Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic (2009). He has co-edited Montesquieu's Political Science: Essays on the Spirit of Laws and edited Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy, and he has published a host of articles in journals and chapters in edited books. Professor Rahe is the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage and Professor of History and Political Science at Hillsdale College.

• Prologue: Machiavelli in the English Revolution; Part I. Machiavelli's New Republicanism: 1. Machiavelli's populist turn; 2. The ravages of an ambitious idleness; Part II. Revolutionary Aristotelianism: 3. The classical republicanism of John Milton; 4. The liberation of captive mind; Part III. Machiavellian Republicanism Anglicized: 5. Marchamont Nedham and the regicide republic; 6. Servant of the rump; 7. The good old cause; Part IV. Thomas Hobbes and The New Republicanism: 8. Thomas Hobbes' republican youth; 9. The making of a modern monarchist; 10. The very model of a modern moralist; 11. The Hobbesian Republicanism of James Harrington; Epilogue.

'This is a truly revelatory new interpretation of the thinkers who laid the foundations of Anglo-American republicanism. Deeply learned and vivaciously written, the work brims with provocative and penetrating insights, highlighting a capaciously synoptic historical vision. A masterwork of a master historian of thought.' Thomas Pangle, University of Texas, Austin