Leo Strauss and the American Right - Hardcover

Drury, Shadia B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312126891 ISBN 13: 9780312126896

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997

Synopsis

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States for his first term and the conservative revolution that was slowly developing in the United States finally emerged in full-throated roar. Who provoked the conservative revolution? Shadia Drury provides a fascinating answer to the question as she looks at the work of Leo Strauss, a seemingly reclusive German Jewish emigré and scholar, who was one of the most influential individuals in the conservative movement, a man widely seen as the godfather of the Republican party’s failed “Contract With America.” Among his students were individuals such as Alan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind. Strauss influenced the work of Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb and William Kristol, as well as Chief Justice Clarence Thomas and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Drury delves deeply into Strauss’s work at the University of Chicago where he taught his students that, if they truly loved America, they must save her from her fateful enchantment with liberalism. Leo Strauss and the American Right is a fascinating piece of work that anyone interested in understanding our current political situation will want to read.

About this title

About the Author

Shadia B. Drury is a professor of politics at the University of Calgary in Canada. She is the author of The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojeve: The Roots of Postmodern Politics. She lives in Canada.

From Publishers Weekly

After the Republican Party drafted its Contract With America in 1994, the New York Times traced the document's neoconservative ideology to the late Leo Strauss (1899-1973), a German Jewish emigre and professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago during the 1950s and '60s. Dubbed by the media as the "godfather of the conservative revolution," Strauss, according to Drury, was considered to be the shadowy force behind the Republican Party, as his teachings were being spread by former students and admirers like Allan Bloom, Clarence Thomas, William Bennett and Irving Kristol. Although Drury's (The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss) prose is occasionally dry and academic, her evidence is persuasive, and her research is impeccable. Beginning with an account of Straussians in Washington, she works back to the professor's dominant ideas and how they affected the current political climate. She investigates how Strauss formed his ideology and what events, such as the Holocaust, may have shaped his views. Her own opinions on the matter of conservatives vs. liberals (she sides with the latter) are clearly stated yet remain incidental because her interest seems to lie in exploration rather than conversion. For students of political theory, Drury is an expert guide.

Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0312126891
• ISBN 13: 9780312126896
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256