Hans Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations (1948) is considered one of the most influential books in the study of international relations. John Vasquez, in The Power of Power Politics (1998), showed how Morgenthau provided a Kuhnian exemplar for IR following World War II. This claim roughly equates Morgenthau's contributions to the field of IR with the contributions Newton made to physics and Lavoisier made to chemistry—two of the more famous Kuhnian exemplars. Given this iconic position in IR, it is surprising that Morgenthau frequently objected to how his ideas were misunderstood. In the preface to the second edition of Politics Among Nations, he echoed Montesquieu's plea made to readers of The Spirit of the Laws. Morgenthau asked his readers not to judge “the labor of twenty years” with “a few hours of reading.” In Hans Morgenthau: Realism and Beyond, William Scheuerman heeds this advice and presents a rich and insightful analysis of Morgenthau's extensive works.

Scheuerman offers convincing evidence that Morgenthau has indeed been misunderstood. Most readers, according to Scheuerman (p. 4), “overlook the richness and nuances of his highly idiosyncratic international theory.” Driven in part by “ambitious normative aspirations,” Scheuerman casts Morgenthau as an “uneasy realist” (pp. 5–6). To make his case, he traces Morgenthau's thought from his early days practicing law in Frankfurt. His experiences in Weimar were informed by two very different figures. The first was Morgenthau's mentor Hugo Sinzheimer, a former member of the Reichstag as well as the law faculty at the University of Frankfurt, who was “one of the major voices in left-wing Weimar jurisprudence” (p. 12). Morgenthau's three years with Sinzheimer left him with a keen appreciation for how law both reflects and shapes society. A second influence in Morgenthau's early years was Carl Schmitt. While Morgenthau found Schmitt's discussions of power vital to any understanding of politics, he was far from an admirer. After one meeting with Schmitt, a shaken Morgenthau reflected, “Now I have met the most evil man alive” (p. 34). These twin, opposing influences from Weimar would continue to shape, if not confound, Morgenthau's uneasy realism. Scheuerman notes that while Morgenthau's sociological approach to international law maintained “the possibility of far-reaching global reform, the dialogue with Schmitt likely strengthened an opposing tendency to discount it” (p. 35). Once aware of these early influences, reading Morgenthau's devastating critiques of the interwar proponents of international law and organization become less dark and dismal. Scheuerman shows that Morgenthau was no critic of international law, arguing that he “repeatedly emphasized the desirability of a world state” (p. 39). Instead, he was critical of naive efforts to promote international law. The tensions between his aspirations for a law-ordered international system and his recognition of Schmitt's pessimistic view of power relations were never completely resolved by Morgenthau. As a result, he remained not only an uneasy realist but also an uneasy liberal internationalist. Retracing Morgenthau's efforts to navigate the vast gray area between the two extremes makes Scheuerman's book so engaging.

Scheuerman has engaged the vast array of Morgenthau's works—and not just his published works. To develop his liberal leanings, Scheuerman discusses unpublished manuscripts in German on questions of pacifism that Morgenthau wrote in the early 1930s, as well as his appeals for international control over atomic weapons published in the 1950s and 1960s. Besides an insightful discussion of Politics Among Nations, Scheuerman also offers extensive and novel interpretations of Morgenthau's other works in IR. His analysis of Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (1946), Purpose of American Politics (1960), and In Defense of the National Interest (1951) are particularly helpful in sorting out Morgenthau's thought. Scheuerman also devotes considerable attention to his role as a public intellectual. During the Vietnam War, Scheuerman notes, Morgenthau was second only to Noam Chomsky as a prominent intellectual critic of the war (p. 165). Morgenthau's writings opposing it have been largely neglected by students of IR.

This survey of Morgenthau's thought will be of particular interest to neoclassical realists. This reconsideration of Morgenthau's rich thought points to how barren—or parsimonious—variants like neorealism can be. Without some modest normative aspirations or clear ideas of how actors may vary in terms other than power, realist theory can be quite limited. While neoclassical realism has started to remedy some of these shortcomings, more careful attention to Morgenthau's realism will help avoid that all-too-popular academic practice of reinventing the wheel. Scheuerman devotes a great deal of interest to second-image concerns and how they shape major-power foreign policy. His ambitions, however, go beyond enriching neoclassical realism. He also seeks “to lead contemporary cosmopolitan advocates of international reform to reconsider Morgenthau's legacy” (p. 6). His rich discussion of Morgenthau's normative ambitions and how they relate to contemporaries like David Held should prompt this reconsideration.

The author sometimes fails to distinguish Morgenthau's “reformulation of realist theory” (p. 135) from his radical departures from it. Although his emphasis on Morgenthau's uneasy relationship with realism permits a degree of leeway, many of Morgenthau's blind spots and inconsistencies could have been elaborated. One frustration from reading this book falls not on Scheuerman but on Morgenthau himself. Scheuerman presents compelling evidence that Morgenthau was indeed an uneasy realist. This is especially evident in the late 1960s and 1970s. Yet, Morgenthau never incorporated this uneasiness into subsequent editions of Politics Among Nations. One area where he seemed to change his mind but not change editions of Politics Among Nations is his thinking on democratic foreign policy. Scheuerman describes how during the Vietnam years, “Morgenthau endorsed the position that a rational foreign policy required a no less rational, or at least decent, society” (p. 167). Yet, subsequent editions remained critical of democratic foreign policy. In his final edition, 1978, he still leveled the Tocquevillian criticism of democratic foreign policy that he had issued in 1948—that democracies were not simply largely inept at foreign policy, but for this reason were regimes that posed the greatest challenges to world peace. This elitist foreign policy model remained unchanged in every edition of Politics Among Nations. If Morgenthau had wanted to elaborate his unease with realism, he could have done so in subsequent editions of the book with which he is most identified in the field of IR.

Once in a while a book comes along that breathes new life into an old topic. Scheuerman's book on Morgenthau accomplishes this task admirably. Morgenthau is presented in such a broad and comprehensive manner that the book will be of interest to a wide range of readers. Scheuerman's effort to relate Morgenthau's ideas to Hobbes and Machiavelli, as well as Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt, will be of interest to political theorists. For those interested in democratic theory and cosmopolitanism, the book neatly reflects both Morgenthau's challenges and his aspirations toward these distinct ends. The gradualist approach that Scheuerman emphasizes is relevant for those interested in the evolution of international society. Morgenthau's trenchant criticisms of the crusading and messianic nature of American foreign policy remain relevant, as do his ideas on the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Neoclassical realists would certainly benefit from this reexamination of Morgenthau. Finally, readers who thought they had a good understanding of Morgenthau will find this book to be challenging and thought-provoking. Scheuerman brings a richer understanding of Morgenthau as a scholar and a public intellectual. And in doing so, he sheds a great deal of light on the richness of the realist tradition in IR.