Hesk's generally persuasive thesis is that as democratic Athenian political culture became ever more deeply engaged with the problem of deceptive public speech, a “rhetoric of antirhetoric” was developed by public speakers and Athenian writers. The book documents how this specialized discourse emerges within various literary genres, political and judicial practice, and cultural performance. It traces a conversation about politics and deceptive rhetoric that ranges from the speeches of Athenian litigants (e.g., Demosthenes and Aeschines), to critical historiography (Thucydides), to philosophy (especially Plato), to comedy (Aristophanes), and tragedy (notably Euripides). Hesk's book is accessible (all Greek is translated, and the language is generally nontechnical), and it provides a useful introduction to important recent work by classicists on Athenian political culture. His project has obvious affinities with the work, not only of other classicists but also of political theorists such as Peter Euben, Arlene Saxonhouse, and Sara Monoson. In light of Hesk's explicit concern with modern politics and his skill at tracing a conversation across various ancient genres, it is a sad commentary on the boundaries encouraged by academic disciplinarity that he does not know the work of these or other classical political theorists.

The book consists of a Prologue, five substantial chapters, and an Epilogue. Chapter 1 sets the framework by showing that democratic Athenian political ideology (as it is revealed in Athenian public speeches) was hostile to deception (especially deception of the demos), and systematically favored openness and honesty in public discourse. The Athenians often contrasted “Athenian openness” with “Spartan deceptiveness.” Yet, as Chapter 2 shows, not only was the reality more complex, but democratic Athenian writers sometimes acknowledged that the public good led Athenian leaders, like their Spartan counterparts, to employ deception—especially in military contexts. Meanwhile, Athenian writers less sympathetic to democracy and more sympathetic to Sparta (notably Xenophon) struggled to square ideals of openness and honesty with the advantages that came with the successful deception of enemies. The troubling question remained: How are the techniques of (military) deception to be insulated from the political realm? How can we be sure that those who learn how to “harm their enemies” through employing deceit will always regard their fellow citizens as “friends” against whom the sharp weapon of deception must never be deployed—especially by those with rhetorical skills? Hesk's Prologue, citing Oliver North's televised testimony before Congress (pp. 1–2), brings the issue home for an American readership.

The “noble lie” of Plato's Republic a famous example of “deception for the common good,” is the starting point for Chapter 3. Hesk asks whether Karl Popper was right to characterize systematic political deception as uniquely typical of antidemocratic Greek thought. Hesk notes that there is only one passage in all of Athenian judicial oratory in which lying to the people is acknowledged as a potentially good thing: In his speech Against Leptines (20.119), Demosthenes claims that his legal opponents have falsely and villainously charged the Athenian ancestors with ingratitude “but they are unlearned because they do not see that even if the charge was completely proven, it would be more appropriate for them to deny it rather than to say it” (Hesk, p. 173). This is a long way from the systematic deception by which Plato's Callipolis is sustained, but Hesk suggests that Popper's association of deceit with antidemocrats may be too strict in light of this bit of common ground between Plato and an Athenian democratic speaker. Hesk then turns to how that common ground, the notion that “lying for the common good” might be morally defensible, was addressed in Athenian drama.

In Chapter 4, Hesk returns to legal oratory, to examine ways in which the “rhetoric of anti-rhetoric” afforded the skilled public speaker opportunities both to employ rhetorical commonplaces (“you Athenian jurors all know that …”) and to develop original rhetorical strategies challenging and subverting those commonplaces (notably Demosthenes [Against Boeotus] 40.53–54: “Whatever anyone of you does not know, let him assume that his neighbor does not know it either!”). Hesk is particularly good on the orator Aeschines’ highly original (if ultimately unsuccessful) portrayal of his opponent Demosthenes as a superliar, with a unique capacity to mimic the characteristics typical of truth-speakers (vivid detail, exact dates, names of witnesses). Chapter 5 opens with the political novel Primary Colors by “Anonymous,” noting that the play of truth and deception is especially unsettling to the novel's reader because of its simultaneous self-presentation as “mere fiction” and as an insider's account of the 1992 presidential campaign. This sets up an insightful reading of how Aristophanes’ comedy Acharnians employs similarly unsettling techniques of authorial perspective. This chapter clearly shows how literary analysis can enlighten problems of political theory and practice.

Hesk's book details how troubling the issue of deceptive speech is for the democratic regime, but also shows that democratic culture (e.g., drama, historiography, and political theory) provides resources whereby citizens may become more thoughtful about those problems, and so (potentially) more capable of confronting them. He rejects the postmodernist notion that the persistence of “deceptive speech as a political problem” undermines the very possibility of truth or reality—a notion exemplified for him by Jean Baudrillard's assertion that it made no sense to think of the Gulf War as real, given the conditions under which it was reported. By contrast, in Athens “there is no sustained insistence that truth and lies do not exist …. [T]here is no serious recommendation that it is a waste of time … to understand the difference between a truth and a falsehood” (pp. 297–98). Hesk's book reminds us of the legitimate centrality of political rhetoric to democracy, yet provides new insight on how sophisticated rhetorical technique complicates the struggle to discover truth. He is surely right to conclude that “without that struggle, we may as well give up on democracy altogether” (p. 298).