Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale remains the finest study ever written about the generative power of family and community in the early history of the American republic. If not with elite academies, sanctioned by kings, and populated by periwigged gentlemen, then with family and community. Martha Ballard, a midwife living during the early years of the American Republic in Maine (at the time a province of Massachusetts), had no formal associations but she did have deep and abiding affiliations. Paine, Copley, and Priestley were all beneficiaries of formal institutional associations, mostly through the voluntary scientific and art associations, the American Philosophical Society in America and the Royal Society and Royal Academy in Britain. For other takes on other Roman emperors it’s hard to beat Margaret Yourcenar’s meditative Memoirs of Hadrian, John Williams’ Augustus, and Robert Graves’ towering I, Claudius. For yet another perspective, it’s entertaining to watch Vidal put into play his own anti-Christian biases and his longing for a tolerant paganism that probably never existed. The post-modern refractions of the three views of Julian (the two philosophers and Julian’s himself) make a rich story that is also a mediation on how history is lived, shaped, written, and received. Julian’s rise and fall is full of action and heartbreak, and the jockeying between the men who distrust each other while each claiming the legacy of the long-dead emperor is amusing. The book sounds boring when described that way, but one of the philosopher’s wants to write a biography of Julian while the other possesses and it reluctant to part with Julian’s own narrative of his life and thought.

Two philosophers who were once close to the emperor Julian write each other long epistolary recollections of and reflections on the emperor’s failed attempt to overthrow Christianity and restore paganism as the official religion of the Roman empire.

After The Lost War by Andrew Hudgins