January 2026 – The Classical Antiquity Sidequest

Book Review – Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors

For my third book review, I’m returning to Antiquity with a review of Adrian Goldsworthy’s book about two Macedonian kings, Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors. This is the first audiobook that I’ve reviewed on the site, so this may be a little different from other reviews I have done and will continue to do. Why do I say that? Well, I just started listening to audiobooks in earnest within the last few months and I find it a little challenging to retain as much of the information, or take notes on the information, compared to when I read a physical book. This is because I listen to audiobooks and podcasts when I run, when I drive or when I’m running errands. So, if I make mistakes here or am otherwise not as detailed as I am in other reviews, my bad. I’ll try to do better the next time around.

Regarding the book itself, I thoroughly enjoyed this one and recommend it to all. Goldsworthy does a masterful job setting the scene of Ancient Greece and Macedonia at the time that Philip came to power. This gives the reader a good sense of the world in which Philip and Alexander found themselves, starting with Macedon and the major Greek power-brokers. Goldsworthy’s decision to take the time to set the historical table, if you will, seemed like a sidequest at first, but doing so allowed the reader, or listener in my case, to understand what Philip had to do to build his kingdom. Spoilers – it wasn’t easy. While I try to not idolize historical figures, it’s hard not to be impressed by what Philip was able to accomplish. He took a part of Greece that was looked down upon by its neighbors and turned it into a major player with a professional and disciplined fighting force.

Goldsworthy doesn’t stop setting the scene in Greece; you get an excellent idea of the challenges that Alexander faced as he tried to place his seal on the Persian Empire he conquered. There is a lot of time devoted to the cultural differences between the Greeks and the Persians that I came across in passing while listening to podcasts. I didn’t fully appreciate those differences until I listened to this book (and probably would’ve appreciated better had I read a physical copy of it). Goldsworthy also does an excellent job analyzing the historical record regarding this time period and pointing out reliability issues with primary and secondary sources. That discussion made me realize that there’s a good argument that we should consider Alexander’s famous last words as a narrative invention, albeit a very good one.

One thing that I particularly enjoyed about the book is that it is about both Philip and Alexander as opposed to just Alexander. When I did my research for the first episode of the podcast, which is about Alexander the Great, I found myself being drawn to stories about Philip more so than Alexander. Without judging or idolizing either historical figure, I always find myself more interested in Philip because he built the system that Alexander was able to use so masterfully. While I’m not saying that Philip is more historically significant than Alexander, I am saying that I personally enjoy learning more about Philip. I always find stories about builders and creators to be compelling and Philip really built his kingdom into something that was different from other Greek cities around him. Again, I’m not saying that one is more worthy of study than the other, but I am saying that, in many respects, you can’t understand Alexander if you don’t understand Philip. So, pairing these two together was a good choice by Goldsworthy.

Another thing that I found interesting was the discussion about how Alexander’s troops not crossing the Hyphasis probably wasn’t that big of a deal at the time and that it only became significant because of Alexander’s death not too long after that. You also get the sense that Alexander wasn’t as unstable as he is portrayed in movies or television (think Oliver Stone’s Alexander) towards the end of his life. Rather, you get a sense that this was a man who had been through a lot, may have had some measure of a traumatic brain injury (if not several) and was understandably stressed from running a large empire and conducting campaign after campaign. Stressed out? Certainly. Mentally unstable and bordering on insane? Probably not.

Goldsworthy also doesn’t just focus on the two kings’ military history. Rather, he spends a lot of time detailing Philip’s diplomatic successes as well as Alexander’s attempt to integrate the Greeks and the Persians. So, while there is a lot of military history to get through, that’s not all that the book is about. All things considered, this is a pretty comprehensive history.

As I wrap up this review, I want to mention one other reason that this book is worth reading. When I read a bad history book, that book can turn me off from the subject matter. But, if I like the book, it can cause me to read other books about the same time period. And this book, fortunately, has done the latter. Goldsworthy’s book has me wanting to read more about that period of history, so I’ve added a few primary and older secondary sources to the to-read list.

Those are my thoughts on the book. Let me know what you think about what I think in the comments, on Bluesky, on Mastodon, on Reddit, or on Instagram.

And never forget that The Classical Antiquity Sidequest is a podcast without end.

You Have Friends Everywhere

Posting this because it seems like a good time to do so. If you haven’t watched Andor yet, which is where this is from, you should.

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.

Sidequest 29 – The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use the Classics

I’ve been a fan of Dr. Curtis Dozier for a while. I stumbled on his podcast, The Mirror of Antiquity, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I then came across his website, Pharos, where he chronicles (mostly horrible and some who are only somewhat horrible but still horrible) people invoking the Classics to justify their horrible beliefs. When I reached out to Dr. Dozier to see if he would come on the podcast, not only did he say yes, but he told me about his current book which is now available for purchase – The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate. Naturally, this book which is now available for purchase, is the topic of the episode.

In Dr. Dozier’s book, which I read and highly recommend, he outlines the goals of white nationalists and where in the Classics white nationalists look to find support for their horrible beliefs. It turns out that they aren’t necessarily misrepresenting history to support their hate-filled, racist and reprehensible beliefs. Rather, such hatred, bigotry and racist beliefs are common and permeate our entire historical and philosophical narrative. And that is the key part of Dr. Dozier’s book – he isn’t just exposing the logical fallacies of white nationalists, he’s exposing the problems inherent with our historical narratives upon which white nationalists rely.

And it’s understanding that issue which makes the discussion we need to have about history so important. Put simply, if we’re going to have a discussion about white nationalists co-opting the Classics, we need to have a discussion about what the Classics are, what they aren’t and our obligations as students and teachers to telling an accurate and complete narrative about the past and how that reflects on the present. We have to stop idolizing the subject matter and be honest about it. Look, folks, if there’s one theme of this podcast, it’s that history is messy. And this episode returns to that theme again and again and again. There’s nothing perfect about the past. The folks who preceded us weren’t saints. They were people, and people are imperfect. So, let’s stop putting the past on a pedestal and get to work making our present and our future a better place.

While I often kick around politics and current events, this is one of the few episodes that covers both in detail. I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed participating in the discussion.

Your reading assignment is Empire of Ruin.

The theme music is from Brent Arehart. Please call the pod (540-632-0160), leave a message and you’ll get in an episode. Let me know what you think about what we think in the comments, on Bluesky, on Mastodon, on Reddit, or on Instagram.

And never forget that The Classical Antiquity Sidequest is a podcast without end.

Book Review – A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

For my second book review, I’m covering a non-Antiquity book, A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America by Bruce Gibney. Sociopaths is about America under the political leadership of the Baby Boomers. Full disclosure before you read this review – I am an OG Millennial whose parents are Baby Boomers. I have very, very negative opinions about the era during which the Boomers have controlled our country. This isn’t a view that I attribute to Boomers as individuals, but to what the generation itself produced during their time as leaders. To cut to the chase, I think that the Boomers, regardless of political party, have produced lousy presidents, lousy policies and accomplished almost nothing at the federal level beyond The Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”). Medicaid expansion, coverage mandates, etc., are / were good things and helped people get something they desperately needed, medical care. Aside from that, the Boomers haven’t done much with their almost thirty years of control of the White House.

And don’t tell me they are responsible for gay marriage – that’s the result of a Supreme Court. That is not the result of a political coalition producing societal change like the Silent Generation did during the Civil Rights era.

Regardless of which party has been in charge of the country, what the Boomers brought us consists of three impeachments for objectively indefensible reasons (Clinton sexually harassed an intern and abused the power differential between him and Monica Lewinsky, Trump used foreign policy for purely personal reasons and then tried to overthrow the elected government of the United States). We got a disastrous and unnecessary war in Iraq, an extreme increase in the use of the filibuster, no vote on Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination, the debacle that is No Child Left Behind and its supplement, “Every Student Succeeds Act”, the financial collapse of 2007-08 that led to the Great Recession and a disastrous response to COVID-19. Remember DOMA? What about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? Remember the gutting of the administrative state through our Boomer Supreme Court? What about rising college tuition costs and the failure to allow student loans to be bankrupted or discharged? There’s no good way to put it – there’s not a lot of success that Boomer leadership can point to. So, with that out of the way, let’s get into the review.

In Sociopaths, Bruce Gibney details how the Boomers (I don’t agree with his definition of 1940-1964 as the generational timeframe; it should be limited to 1946-1964) are generally a self-absorbed, self-serving generation who push policies that benefit them while harming others and won’t do the necessary work to fix looming problems (see generally how we’ve failed to address “entitlements” like Social Security despite knowing that we’re going to be in the red on this in the 2030s for decades now). The book is divided up into several areas in which Gibney is of the belief that the Boomers failed including a rejection of fact in favor of feelings, cutting taxes too much, a failure to improve our country’s infrastructure, policies that resulted in mass incarceration, etc. The book provides a compelling argument that the Boomers have generally failed as leaders, chosen short-sighted and selfish (as opposed to selfless) policies and have done next to nothing to improve the country they inherited. There is a lot about economics in the book that, in full disclosure, I don’t have sufficient expertise to fully understand much less discuss. Regardless, Gibney paints a pretty good picture that the economic policy that has dominated during the Boomer era has been to deregulate, cause a preventable crisis and then run to the government for bailouts when it’s beneficial. He also makes it sound like that will happen again when there isn’t enough money to pay for Social Security benefits when the last round of Boomers retire and start collecting checks. Get ready to pay for your parents’ retirements, folks!

In regard to specific Boomer failures, this book picks up on a lot of things that I’ve come to believe during the last several years and did believe before I read the book. Take our highway system, rail system and transportation system generally. The “Greatest” and Silent Generations put in the hard work to build up the United States and provide it with a modern transportation system. Those generations gave us an interconnected highway system that made our current economy possible. What have the Boomers done since then? Not much. No massive updates, no significant improvements and nothing other than putting a new coat of paint on a dilapidated house while bridges collapse. Sadly, that’s par for the course for Boomer leadership – patch and paint until a preventable disaster happens and something has to be done. The Eisenhower Interstate System is a remarkable thing. We should do everything we can to keep it updated. We have the resources to do that and there’s no excuse not to.

Gibney also takes aim at our school system under Boomer leadership and he does make some good points. Before I get into that, I will say that education “reform” is complicated and something that should be undertaken with scepticism. Things like “teacher accountability” may sound nice, but it isn’t practical. Education is a long, slow process that can’t be addressed or measured by annual test results. Also, how do you compare well-funded school systems full of professors’ kids to a poorly funded school full of kids who don’t have enough food to eat or a stable home? We have to be realistic and accept that “accountability” is hard to measure across different schools, districts and systems. I will say, though, that Gibney makes a good point that diverting public funds to charter schools isn’t good policy. On top of that, the Boomers have presided over an era where we’ve all pretty much agreed that our schools need to be better and we could do simple things like go to year-round school. But has more than 30 years of Boomer leadership seen us make that change? Nope. This failure is indicative of the Boomer mentality, a mentality which is best described by Homer Simpson almost dying of thirst and, instead of getting up to go to the kitchen to get something to drink, said, “So thirsty! Eh, what are you gonna do?”

Oh, and if that weren’t enough to demonstrate failures of Boomer leadership, Gibney hammers home the fact that the Boomers have done almost nothing on climate change policy. I’ll leave that there as discussing it further is too depressing.

One area that I did find particularly interesting is the discussion of the Boomers’ objections to serving in Vietnam. He made a strong case that while the Boomers were the group most inclined to support the war, they were also the most likely to take education deferments as opposed to trying for conscientious objector status. What he’s getting at is that the Boomers supported a war that they weren’t willing to fight in. If the Boomers were really opposed to Vietnam, why not try for conscientious objector status? It couldn’t be because an education deferment was easier to get, could it? Certainly not in an era when college was affordable which it isn’t now (thanks, Boomers). Gibney made a credible case that the Boomers were more than happy to push the costs of the war on a group of people comprised of, as John McCain put it, “the Hispanic, the ghetto black, and the Appalachian white”. This is an area that is worth some additional research and study. It may well prove Gibney’s point that the Boomers were hypocrites from the start. They did, of course, immediately become Reaganites after an economic crisis in the 70s that wasn’t really that bad. If they shed their ideology that quickly, maybe they never really cared about Vietnam in the first place and it was all about themselves as opposed to an actual cause. Fact check comes back mostly true on that one.

These are the main areas of the book that I feel comfortable discussing. The economic policies are, as mentioned, a little over my head and area of actual, or professed, expertise.

While I don’t agree with Gibney that the Boomer generation meets the DSM definition of “sociopath”, I do think that Gibney succeeds in proving that Boomer leadership failed us and continues to fail us. The only way to fix this is to vote the Boomers out. If we keep voting for Boomers who have proven that they’ve done nothing but fail us, we’re only fooling ourselves. In addition to that, we’re giving a generation more power at a time where they will do all they can to make sure that Social Security checks keep coming to them by taxing us at a level they’ve never been willing to tax themselves. It’s time to vote them out. Send the bums home.

The need to vote them out transcends membership in any political party. Let’s be real – the only good Boomer is one who doesn’t hold political office. Gibney makes compelling arguments that under Boomer leadership, both parties are complicit in the failures to address infrastructure, taxes, the environment, etc. While I do think there are differences between both parties (see abortion and women’s issues), I do think that Boomers have been in power long enough, have done too much damage to the country and it’s time for them to go. I don’t care if it means that I’m not voting for Mark Warner this year – he’s a Boomer and that’s all I need to know. This means I’ll end up voting third-party or I’ll write someone in because I know I’m not voting for a Republican.

So, while I don’t think that the Boomers are sociopaths, I think that their generation failed to produce positive benefits during the time in which they have been in political charge of the United States. It’s time for them to go. Vote them out and read the book while you’re at it. Sociopaths is an entertaining read.

Those are my thoughts on the book. Let me know what you think about what I think in the comments, on Bluesky, on Mastodon, on Reddit, or on Instagram.

And never forget that The Classical Antiquity Sidequest is a podcast without end.