We conclude our preview of the Fall issue of the Claremont Review of Books today with the essay by Algis Valiunas on Edward Gibbons’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Algis is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributing editor to The New Atlantis.

Algis is also a learned essayist whose work regularly appears in the CRB. His essay on Gibbon is “Voice of civilization.” In his opening sentence he writes with a glint in his eye: “Like Herodotus, Thucydides, Montaigne, and Proust, Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) was a one-book wonder.” This is a long essay on an eternally timely classic to be read and savored over the holiday weekend.

Penguin Books has published David Womersley’s edition of the History in three paperback volumes. The three volumes appear to be available from Amazon here. Algis concedes that Gibbon “will remain among those great writers of history rarely read any more[,]” yet this should not entirely be the case. As the title of Algis’s essay suggests, Gibbon’s History is one of the permanent possessions of our civilization.

This is the third and final of the pieces with which we are previewing the new issue of the CRB. As always, the new issue is full of good stuff. Interested readers can subscribe at the heavily subsidized price of $19.95 a year. At that price the CRB affords the most cost-effective political education available in the United States of America. Subscribe by clicking on Subscription Services at the link and get immediate online access thrown in for free.