First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

by Thomas E. Ricks

he retreated into rereading a biography of Cicero. There he found eerie parallels between the decline of the Roman Republic and the condition of the United States. “I Seem to read . . . the History of our own Country for forty years past. Change the Names and every Anecdote will be applicable to Us.”