New Book Discusses Why Tyrannical Temptation is a Permanent Danger

NEW YORK, N.Y. – January 28, 2016 – Tyranny is as dangerous as ever in today’s world as the forces of liberty and oppression are locked in a struggle around the globe.

Now a soon-to-be-released new book analyzes a history of tyranny from Achilles to today’s Jihadists and discusses why tyrannical temptation is a permanent danger.

Waller Newell’s ‘Tyrants: A History of Power, Injustice, and Terror’ available on March 15, 2016 in hardcover ($29.99) from Cambridge University Press details how the forces of freedom are challenged everywhere by a newly energized spirit of tyranny, whether it be Jihadist terrorism, Putin's imperialism, or the ambitions of China’s dictatorship.

The book examines why tyranny is a permanent danger on the human landscape by following its strange career from Homeric Bronze Age warriors through the founding of the world empires of Alexander the Great and Rome, and the medieval struggle between the City of God and the City of Man, leading to the state-building despots of the Modern Age, including the Tudors and ‘enlightened despots’ such as Peter the Great.

‘Tyrants: A History of Power, Injustice, and Terror’ explores the psychology of tyranny from Nero to Gaddafi, and how the character of tyranny changes beginning with the Jacobin Terror into millenarian revolution.

Written in an engaging, jargon-free style, it will appeal to anyone interested in the danger posed by tyranny and terror in today's world.

Praise for Tyrants: A History of Power, Injustice, and Terror“The world is currently engulfed by all sorts of strongmen, authoritarians, and totalitarians. Are they all alike? Not always. In an engaging review of some 2,500 years of tyranny – drawing on a considerable knowledge of Western history and literature –Walter Newell masterfully sorts out tyrannies, ancient and modern, to remind us how they rise and why they fall—again and again. Tyrannies are the existential enemies of democracies – but not always in the same manner and to the same degree. And why that it is true makes fascinating reading.”-Victor Davis Hanson, Martin and Illie Anderson Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University

“If I could think of one book for a young lover of democracy, or democratic politician to read about tyranny – supposedly a thing of the past – it would be Waller Newell's eloquent, approachable, fascinating Tyrants. Based on an astoundingly broad knowledge of history, from ancient times to the present, from high culture to pop culture, this book penetrates into the soul of the tyrant.... This is the biography of tyranny we have been waiting for.”  -Norman Doidge, MD, Author of The Brain That Changes Itself; Research Faculty, Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University; Faculty, University of Toronto, Department of Psychiatry.

“This is a wonderful book, learned and insightful, acute and often brilliant. It is both a monument of scholarship and a call to action. Newell’s Tyrants is as morally serious as a work of political philosophy and as sparkling with wit as an evening with the Marx Brothers.”-Barry Strauss, Cornell University

“Waller Newell is the most brilliant interpreter of tyranny now alive. His stories of ancient and traditional tyranny, often left to narrow scholars, are absorbing, sometimes funny, but it is the accounts of Soviet Communism and Nazism that are most intellectually compelling and passionate. Newell can sweep untidy piles of facts into elegant phrases – the beautification of violence – that capture their hidden meaning. At a moment when tyranny is coming back, everyone alert to the strangeness of our world ought to be reading this book.”-Charles Fairbanks, Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute“In a time when tyranny is resurgent all over the globe, in a bewildering variety of forms—military and civilian, theocratic and kleptocratic, ideological and tribal—this book provides a synoptic historical and philosophic perspective that does full justice to the manifold phenomenon in all its range and complexity.”-Thomas L. Pangle, Joe R. Long Endowed Chair in Democratic Studies, Department of Government

“Tyranny remains the oldest and most durable political phenomenon. Tyrants provide a stunning refutation of those who still believe that the historical process or the logic of the market will bring about a more peaceful democratic world. This book is a must read for any serious student of political science.”-Steven B. Smith, Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science, Yale University

“At the highest levels of government, diplomacy and academia, are otherwise intelligent people who have convinced themselves that tyrants and tyrannies are anachronisms bound to be replaced by more enlightened forms of government. They apparently believe in a “clock of human progress” and that the “arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” This rosy scenario is unsupported by the historical evidence as Waller R. Newell makes clear in his timely exploration of the durability and persistent appeal of repression.”-Clifford D. May, President, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

Newell’s book, ‘Tyrants: A History of Power, Injustice, and Terror’ isavailable on March 15, 2016, in hardcover ($29.99) from Cambridge University Press. 260 pages. [ISBN: 978-1107083059].

About the AuthorWaller R. Newell, Carleton University, Ottawa
Waller R. Newell is Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Carleton University, Ottawa, where he helped found and also teaches at the College of the Humanities, Canada's only four-year baccalaureate in the Great Books. He has held a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship. His books include Tyranny: A New Interpretation (Cambridge, 2013); The Soul of a Leader: Character, Conviction and Ten Lessons in Political Greatness; and The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country. He served on the first Reagan Administration transition team in the areas of humanitarian affairs and human rights. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University.

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