Amazon.com (ISBN 0684827891, Hardcover)

In From Plato to NATO, political historian David Gress takes a wide-ranging look at the development of Western Europe and its colonial outposts. Gress views Europe not just as a geographic entity, but as a complex of conflicting ideas such as social good and individual rights, control and freedom. Those ideas come from many traditions, and they have blended to make the region politically and economically unlike any other in the world. Gress's viewpoint is conservative, but the author also calls himself a "skeptical liberal." Readers of all political stripes will find much food for thought in these pages.