There was Judalon de Bornay, the proud, self-willed New Orleans beauty; Catherine Villars, the sensuous quadroon mistress of of pirate Jean Lafitte; and Ursula de Veramendi, the lovely and tragic daughter of the vice-governor of Mexican Texas.A legend in his own time, Bowie's career sprawled violently across the lawless Southwest. He fought incredible duels. He dealt in slave trading, gambled recklessly, and became involved in gigantic land speculations. He led the Texas irregulars in a spectacular Indian battle. And Bowie was one of the doomed defenders of the Alamo, a martyr in the selfless cause of patriotism.

    The Pillars of the Community (1877) depicts a corrupt shipowner’s struggle to hide the sins of his past at the expense of another man’s reputation, while in The Wild Duck (1884) an idealist, believing he must tell the truth at any cost, destroys a family by exposing the lie behind his friend’s marriage. And Hedda Gabler (1890) portrays an unhappily married woman who is unable to break free from the conventional life she has created for herself, with tragic results for the entire family.

    How does beautiful but provincial Drusilla take to New York? By storm!

    The work is divided into three major parts: the generative order of society, which covers growth in the jungle, economic arts, and the liberal arts; the militant order of society, which examines factions and enterprise; and the rational order of society, which contains one of the most sustained critiques of democratic systems and liberal ideologies extant.Written at a midpoint in the century, but at the close of his career, Santayana's volume offers an ominous account of the weakness of the West and its similarities in substance, if not always in form, with totalitarian systems of the East. Few analyses of concepts, such as government by the people, the price of peace and the suppression of warfare, the nature of elites and limits of egalitarianism, and the nature of authority in free societies, are more comprehensive or compelling. This is a carefully rendered statement on tasks of leadership for free societies that take on added meaning after the fall of communism.The author of a definitive biography of Santayana, John McCormick provides the sort of deep background that makes possible an assessment of Dominations and Powers. He permits us to better appreciate the place of this work at the start no less than conclusion of Santayana's long career. For the author of The Life of Reason himself admits to having led a life in unreason--deeply impacted by the war of 1914-1918, ^and then again, 1939-1945.McCormick provides in his opening essay a careful story of Santayana's exile from his Anglo-American homeland, a deeply embittered figure in search of options to annihilation at the military level and an alternative to false and fatuous ideologies at the spiritual level. We know better now how to cope with this profound, yet disturbing classic in political thought.