Early Reviewers

A leader's mouth makes the statement. The hands make the confession.

In Hands of State, Denis Franz catalogues the gestures of political power: the handshake that wouldn't let go, the raised fist, the apology hand, the pointed finger, the fidget caught on camera. Across thirty short chapters — from Caesar to AOC, from Merkel's diamond to Macron's counter-grip — he reads the hand as the oldest political language we have, and the one we forget we're fluent in.

This is not a body-language manual. It is a cultural history of the most political organ a person owns — written for readers who already suspect that the photo op is doing more work than the speech. For readers of Mary Beard, Malcolm Gladwell, and Anne Applebaum.