cover image Leo Strauss and the American Right

Leo Strauss and the American Right

Shadia B. Drury. Palgrave MacMillan, $75 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-312-12689-6

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. (Jan.)