Author: Isaac Nakhimovsky

The Holy Alliance is now most familiar as a label for conspiratorial reaction. In this book, Isaac Nakhimovsky reveals the Enlightenment origins of this post-Napoleonic initiative, explaining why it was embraced at first by many contemporary liberals as the birth of a federal Europe and the dawning of a peaceful and prosperous age of global progress. Examining how the Holy Alliance could figure as both an idea of progress and an emblem of reaction, Nakhimovsky offers a novel vantage point on the history of federative alternatives to the nation state.

The result is a clearer understanding of the recurring appeal of such alternatives—and the reasons why the politics of federation has also come to be associated with entrenched resistance to liberalism’s emancipatory aims.

Nakhimovsky connects the history of the Holy Alliance with the better-known transatlantic history of 18th-century constitutionalism and 19th-century efforts to abolish slavery and war. He also shows how the Holy Alliance was integrated into a variety of liberal narratives of progress. From the League of Nations to the Cold War, historical analogies to the Holy Alliance continued to be drawn throughout the 20th century, and Nakhimovsky maps how some of the fundamental political problems raised by the Holy Alliance have continued to reappear in new forms under new circumstances.

“Dagon” is a cosmic horror short story by H.P. Lovecraft that was published in 1919 and takes place after the First World War.

The narrator, a former prisoner of war, recounts a strange and disturbing experience after being rescued at sea.

After his ship is captured and he escapes on a lifeboat, the narrator finds himself stranded on an unknown island.

As he explores the island, he discovers strange, monstrous fossilized creatures and ancient ruins, coming to the realization that the island is situated on top of a sunken civilization, which had been below the ocean’s surface for eons.

The narrator encounters a massive, horrific creature that he identifies as the sea deity Dagon from ancient Philistine mythology.

The creature is part human and amphibious and appears to be the remnant of the island’s previous civilization. The narrator is filled with a sense of dread and madness as he realizes the full implications of his discovery.

“Dagon” is one of Lovecraft’s early classic stories that helped establish his unique brand of cosmic horror in the Cthulhu Mythos, a shared fictional universe that originated in the author’s works.

Lovecraft is a pioneer of the cosmic horror genre, a style of horror and dark fantasy that he helped develop and popularize in the early 20th century.

He taps into humanity’s fear of the unknown, the irrational and our ultimate insignificance in the face of the uncaring, unfathomable forces of the universe.

Lovecraft’s style has had a lasting influence on modern horror, science fiction and fantasy.