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Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea |  | Author: Irving Kristol
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Rating:  6 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 512
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.6
ISBN: 0028740211
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.520973
EAN: 9780028740218
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Amazon.com Review
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
Product Description
A statement of the intellectual and political creed that has come to be known as ""neoconservatism"" from its most influential spokesman offers a collection of essays on society, religion, morals, culture, literature, education, and ""values"" issues. 20,000 first printing.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
 A corrective January 13, 2000
47 out of 70 found this review helpful
As the author of the review below is clearly a madman, a corrective is in order. Kristol thinks clearly, writes elegantly, and maintains an almost courtly good-humor and reserve.
A life in thought July 25, 2001
19 out of 42 found this review helpful
This book is a breathtaking collection of social thought--sober, lucid, even profound--on the possibilities and dangers of liberal society.
 A very good overview of Krisol's beleifs... June 6, 2004
S. Koropeckyj (The Bright Side of the Moon)
27 out of 30 found this review helpful
Whether you agree or disagree with Kristol on any of the issues that he writes about is besides the point. Kristol is an extremely talented and intelligent writer and would be whether we was a neo-con, a old conservative, new liberal or whatever. Thus if you disagree with any of the points outlined in Kristol's book then do not let it turn you off from reading it, as it is still very educational about the neoconservative ideology.
However the books real merits are that it is organized so well into essays rather than just one long rant or a few long and preachy chapters. Because everything in this book is jsut something that Kristol wrote at one time or another, you can read just one essay a day or a few a day as most are rather short. Furthermore the table of contents provides great direction about any issue that Kristol wrote about ranging from Race, Sex, and family to Jews, to Capitalism and the Democratic Idea. Because each essay is so easy to read and the individual issues are easy to find this tome can be easily used as a reference source and if you need to know anything about the neo- conservative ideology be sure to look here first, especially if you think that he is wrong about everything.
Father of modern Conservative Punditry January 28, 2005
E. David Swan (South Euclid, Ohio USA)
34 out of 41 found this review helpful
Irving Kristol has been declared by some to be the father of neo-conservatism. This is the same philosophical group that has gained such prominence of late in the Pentagon and Bush White House. The same group that Pat Buchanan claims are Liberals rotting away the core of Conservativism.
Neo-conservatives are said to be `Liberals who've been mugged'. Supposedly this awakens them from their idealist fantasies into the cold, hard world called reality. This book is pieced together from articles written by Kristol spanning over half a century on a wide range of topics. It quickly and sadly becomes clear that Kristol's ideas have had a HUGE influence on modern Conservative polemics. Many of his ideas echo in the words of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and many others. However unlike the members of that list of shame Irving Kristol generally manages to retain his dignity and not delve into the infantile behavior of his unfortunate emulators.
The book chronicles Kristol's journey from young Trotskyite to anti-communist liberal to just plain anti-liberal. I suppose once Communism began to fade Kristol needed to focus his dissatisfaction somewhere and he never forgave those liberals who worked as apologists for Stalin. Kristol also built up a high degree of animosity towards liberals during the radical era of the sixties.
I do recommend this book for anyone interested in learning about where today's Conservative pundits got their ideas from. It certainly makes Limbaugh and crew look far less creative. Kristol also has a much better writing style and a much wider array of interests than today's Conservative writers and if liberals can get past some of Kristol's more distasteful and sometimes pompous views they may even find themselves agreeing with some of his points.
It's on the last page that Kristol really seems to come apart at the seams. Here are words by Kristol that could have come straight from something written by Coulter or Hannity:
"But what began to concern me more and more were the clear signs of rot and decadence germinating within American society - a rot and decadence that was no longer the consequence of liberalism but was the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism."
Kristol, Neo-Conservativism p. 486
"I no longer had to pretend to believe - what in my heart I could no longer believe - that liberals were wrong because they subscribe to this or that erroneous opinion on this or that topic. No - liberals were wrong, liberals are wrong, because they are liberals. What is wrong with liberalism is liberalism - a metaphysics and a mythology that is woefully blind to human and political reality."
Kristol, Neo-Conservativism p. 486
 Another example of confused conservatives October 29, 2003
47 out of 96 found this review helpful
The author is a fairly adequate writer. He packs alot of ideas into a fairly compact space. He is entertaining, and attempts to lure the reader into his mindset rather than writing a book on pure political philosophy which can get dry at times. I give this book 4 stars in that respect. However, 4 stars shall not be my offical rating. I feel the need to counterbalance his fair writing skills with a negative rating because I think the writer is just anothr example of an ultra-confused modern quasi-conservative (aka a "new" conservative, aka a left winger masquarading as a conservative). If you want REAL conservatism, Old-Conservatism read the works of Ludwig Von Mises and Murray Rothbard (go to the mises.org website where you will learn the very definition of good quality scholarship in writing). Also read the works of Justin Raimondo whos book "Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement" you will find more beneficial. Also read Raimandos book "Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard", or even "The Conservative Mind" for classic essays on Old Conservatism before it became poisoned by the post New Deal socialists turned quasi-conservatives. Furthermore, this book reaks of religious influence straight from the beginning. Religion has nothing whatsoeverto do with political conservatism in the least; I give this book zero stars for that portion, attempting to mislead the reader with his anti-conservative agenda. The book is filled with entire chapters that have nothing to do with Old-Conservatism based on cherishing economic property rights. The book is filled with new-conservatism, shove it down your throats quasi-morality lessons. True conservatism stems largely from the works of John Locke's 17th Century "Second Treatise on Government" upon which he lays the foundation for economic property rights. The thesis which has served Old-conservatives well for 300 years is simple. A mans physical property (land and such) can never be secure until a man is secure in his persons. "Self-ownership"; the right to possess, sell, trade, or buy "ideas" or "thoughts" is the premise of all true conservatism. Mans "thoughts and ideas" are his property just the same as a piece of land. Thats why we have copyrights and trademarks! Yet, modern quasi-conservatives, instigated by phonies such as this author, want to purvey their "new conservative" agenda by controlling mans ideas and thoughts through law (i.e. anti-porno laws, anti-seditious speech laws, anti-whatever-else-is-immoral-today type of laws)... and if a man cannot control his own body and do with it what he will, then he'll never be secure in his physical property,... which is why we have rampant emminant domain laws which take away peoples houses and give them to corporations so they can build your local strip-malls, not to mention "property seizure" laws which dump on peoples Constitutional rights.
This book IS very interesting, and well written... but it's also a good example of where true conservatism went wrong, and in fact I recommend that every Old-Conservative read this book to make sure they don't make the same mistakes as promoted in this book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
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