There is no mystery shrouding the toppling pillars of Western civilization and human culture, and George Marlin can no longer watch. Like many readers who are seeing the same destructive forces roaming unchecked and wish to confront them, Marlin has with keenness composed a kind of response that contextualizes the problem and its historical masters, these so-called post-modern "monsters." Among these are Martin Luther, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hegel, Comte, Mussolini, Hitler, and Marx. His treatment of Antonio Gramsci's "anti-Church" is particularly jolting and redeems the underrepresented efforts of two Catholic popes to defend human dignity. Marlin is notorious for making sense sting a bit in the reader who has been too complacent, and encouraging those who wish to fortify and steel the intuitions of the intellect.

            Modern Monsters exposes the lack of coherency and bitterness (the only 'natural' attributes of ideology) and claims that ideological thinking in the post-modern era is waging open war with the foundations of Judeo-Christian society. Its chief target is the Catholic Church. Marlin rightly calls out the irony in ideologues, as theirs is simply another kind of idolatry and "secular religion."

            This concise review of the fatal attraction to ideologies and their applications takes the reader quickly to the heart of the matter and introduces him to a plethora of voices that ought to be heard instead. Indeed, one of the delights of this book is the host of true intellects he calls upon to make his point. In that sense, despite his emphasis on a society in ruin, Marlin's lasting effect is leaving us in the company of those who model what it is to live as worthy heirs of the Western tradition.

George J. Marlin is Chairman of Aid to the Church in Need-U.S.A., an agency under the guidance of the Pope. A former Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey, he is a contributing editor to TheCatholicThing.org, an online publication. Marlin is the author/editor of fourteen books including The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of
Political Impact. Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party, and with Brad Miner, Sons of St. Patrick: The History of the Archbishops of New York. His 700+
articles have appeared in over 2 dozen periodicals including The New York Times, N.Y. Post, New York Daily News, Washington Times and National Review. His most recent book is Mario
Cuomo: The Myth and the Man.