This fascinating book by one of America's leading public intellectuals spans nearly half a century of writing, with essays on sex, politics, and religion. Irving Kristol has long been considered the godfather of neoconservatism, a political persuasion that breathed intellectual life into the moribund Republican Party during the 1970s and helped make Ronald Reagan's ascendancy possible. But because Kristol spent the bulk of his career in the highbrow journalistic world of essays and commentary, he never authored a full book that defines his mode of thinking or traces its development. This collection of essays is the closest thing there is, and it's a real treat: smart, often counterintuitive, and full of good writing. As Kristol notes on the opening pages, "An intellectual who didn't write struck me as only half an intellectual." And Kristol is clearly a full intellectual. Much of the writing here has appeared elsewhere--in Commentary, where Kristol served as an editor; The Wall Street Journal, where he regularly contributes to the op-ed page; and The Public Interest, which he founded and still edits. The best part of the book, however, is an original essay, "An Autobiographical Memoir." In it, Kristol sketches his intellectual growth, which began while he was a young man attending neo-Trotskyite meetings in Brooklyn (where he met his wife, the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb) and eventually took him to Washington, D.C., where today he is a fixture at right-of-center political gatherings. For readers interested in conservative politics, Neoconservatism is a keeper. --John J. Miller


From Publishers Weekly
This hefty collection of some 40 articles and essays written since the 1950s represents a kind of summation for neocon doyen Kristol, editor of the Public Interest. Particularly interesting is his previously unpublished opening memoir concerning influences such as Lionel Trilling, Leo Strauss and army life as well as the founding of his magazine and his work with the American Enterprise Institute to extend conservatism beyond free enterprise to reflect "on the roots of social and cultural stability." The articles are a varied lot. Some denigrate such topics as multiculturalism and the "consumers' protection movement" or declare that the 1960s counterculture was essentially unprovoked. More compelling essays reflect on the "true purposes" of the American Revolution, the 1960s growth of the "new class" and the "perverse consequences" of Great Society programs that ignored universal applicability. Kristol also includes several essays on Jews in America and on the country's latter-day shift to conservatism. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Until the Great Society a mainstream liberal, Kristol has since been a highly recognized conservative of the neo-prefix. Perhaps he stuck out because of apostasy or as one of the few right-wingers in New York's literati set; more likely it was that his articles, about 40 collected here, made him the standard bearer of Democrats alienated by their party's post-1968 travails. Some pieces analyze political trends and interest groups from that time to the present, while others partake of religio-philosophical topics about which Kristol has written since his early magazine days in the late 1940s. Then, and more strongly as decades passed and the social fabric became ever coarser, some manifestation of the public's moral fiber (welfare or AIDS) and the interaction between the intellectual classes have been Kristol's chief concerns, along with the intellectuals' adversarial attitudes about capitalism or moral judgments about personal behavior. A social philosopher with the acute insight that thought worthy of the name must heed, Kristol and his chrestomathy will engage fan and foe alike. Gilbert Taylor


James Neuchterlein, Wall Street Journal
Mr. Kristol possesses a genius for making his sophisticated and nuanced arguments appear the commonplace of everyman.


Andrew Sullivan, New York Times Book Review
From the beginning, Kristol’s writing has exhibited a wealth of common sense and understated wit.


Book Description
The movement called neo-conservatism has provided the intellectual foundation for the resurgence of American conservatism in our time. And if neo-conservatism can be said to have a father or an architect, that person is Irving Kristol.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Neoconservatism is the most comprehensive selection of Kristol's influential writings on politics and economics, as well as the best of his now-famous essays on society, religion, culture, literature, education, and - above all-the "values" issues that have come to define the neoconservative critique of contemporary life.

These essays provide an unparalleled insight into the 50-year development of Kristol's social and political ideas, from an uneasy socialism tempered with religious orthodoxy, to a vigilant optimism about the future of the American experiment. Those already familiar with Kristol's work will especially enjoy the new autobiographical essay that introduces this volume; it is sprinkled with personal recollections about such luminaries as Lionel Trilling, Leo Strauss, Saul Bellow, Sidney Hook, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and historian Gertrude Himmelfarb (who was also Mrs. Kristol). Those relatively new to Kristol's writings will be treated to some of the most lucid insightful, entertaining, and intellectually challenging essays of our time.

FROM THE CRITICS

Andrew Sullivan

Often persuasive, and very wise. . . . From the beginning, Mr. Kristol's writing has exhibited a wealth of common sense and understated wit. This book is full of both.

James Nuechterlein