I was impressed with "The Empire and the Five Kings" which is an indictment of U.S. foreign relations in the last decade. Lévy is an experienced French observer of the U.S. and its foreign relations efforts. The five kingdoms, Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and Sunni radical Islamism, have not been adequately dealt with. One can tell that Lévy had a classical education with poignant references to Ancient Rome. His basic sadness is that the Kurds have suffered more than most in the Middle East with no one championing their cause. He applauds America with defeating Nazi Germany and leading the world as Europe stumbled back. Lévy reviews historians who have written about triumph and decadence of empires: Rousseau, Montesquieu, Nietzsche, Gibbon, Oswald Spengler, Robert Musil, Arnold Toynbee, and so forth. He even muses about the variety of language families in Anatolian peninsula and the Caucasus Mountains. And then the Chinese and Americans need to avoid the trap of Herodotus (not Thucydides). ( )