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Neo-conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea Paperback – March 15, 1999

by Irvin Kristol (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 26 ratings
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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. Schooled in radical socialism in the 1930s, Kristol grew disillusioned with the left and rose to become an ideological foe of the Soviet Union, an active editor and publisher, and a prolific writer in his own right. He helped move a generation of intellectuals to the conservative cause. Neoconservatism is the most comprehensive selection of Mr. 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 neo-conservative critique of contemporary life. Composed over almost fifty years, these writings offer some of the most lucid, insightful, entertaining, and intellectually challenging essays of our time. “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.”―Andrew Sullivan, New York Times Book Review. “Mr. Kristol possesses a genius for making his sophisticated and nuanced arguments appear the commonplace of everyman.... He has thought and written with admirable clarity, honesty, and courage.”―James Nuechterlein, Wall Street Journal.
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  1. Print length
    512 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Ivan R. Dee
  4. Publication date
    March 15, 1999
  5. Dimensions
    6.11 x 1.41 x 9.12 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1566632285
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1566632287
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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

Review

Often persuasive, and very wise...From the beginning, Kristolís writing has exhibited a wealth of common sense and understated wit. This book is full of both. -- Andrew Sullivan ― The New York Times

Mr. Kristol possesses a genius for making his sophisticated and nuanced arguments appear the commonplace of everyman...he has thought and written with admirable clarity, honesty, and courage. -- James Neuchterlein ― The Wall Street Journal

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ivan R. Dee; 1st Elephant Paperba edition (March 15, 1999)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1566632285
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1566632287
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.68 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.11 x 1.41 x 9.12 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 26 ratings

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Irving Kristol

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4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
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Frank Bunyard
4.0 out of 5 stars Neoconservative essays
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2011
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This review covers the three editions of Irving Kristol's essays: (1) Kristol, Irving. Reflections of a neo-conservative (1986); (2 Neo-conservatism: The autobiography of an idea / Irving Kristol (1999); and (3) The Neo-conservative Persuasion: Selected Essays. 1942-2009/Irving Kristol, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (2009). The essays were written from the late 1940s through the 1990s.

It's difficult to write a review that can convey the scope, depth, and power of wisdom contained in these collections of articles, but it would be more difficult to write a separate review for each collection. Duplication of the articles in more than one book is a problem. At least twelve of the essays are reprinted verbatim in their entirety in the "Reflections" and the "The autobiography of an idea" edited by Kristol. Half the essay, "The Right Stuff" is duplicated word for word in Himmelfarb's collection as well as the complete "An Autobiographical Memoir" which is reprinted from Kristol's "The autobiography of an idea". The three volumes total 118 essays and 1,100 pages.

These articles were originally written for "think" magazines (Encounter, Commentary, The National Interest et al) which Kristol edited or co-edited with prominent public intellectuals such as Daniel Bell. Kristol also appeared in many symposiums, gave many interviews and lectures, and was Professor of Social Thought at New York University. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. This is but a small sample of his prestigious affiliations and honors. He died aged 89 on Sept. 18, 2009 from complications of lung cancer.

Since all three volumes contain essays that cover the same fifty year time frame, there is no continuous connection; they are not in sequence, each volume is a self-contained selection covering the same basic themes and time frame as the others. The articles are brief, some only three or four pages, the average being perhaps eight or nine pages. This is not the kind of writing for a gripping read although Kristol is lucid and fluent. These are not books; they are collections of condensed critiques of the political and cultural issues of modernity and post modernity by one of the finest minds of this era. Kristol's insights are as viable today as when they were written.

In the "Reflections" edition (pp. 76-77) Kristol lays out the creed of the neoconservative which is abbreviated here:

(1) Neo-conservatism is a current of thought...provoked by disillusionment with contemporary liberalism....

(2) ....neo-conservatism is anti-romantic in substance and temperament.

3) ....the teaching and writing of the late Leo Strauss are of importance....Neoconservatives are admiring of Aristotle, respectful of Locke, distrustful of Rousseau.

(4) The attitude of neoconservatives to bourgeois society and the bourgeois ethos is one of detached attachment (sic).

(5) Neoconservatism is inclined to the belief that a predominantly market economy...is a necessary precondition...for a free society. It also sees a market economy as favorable to economic growth.

(6) Neoconservatives believe in the importance of economic growth...as indispensable for social and political stability.

(7) A conservative welfare state...is perfectly consistent with a neoconservative perspective...a state that takes a degree of responsibility for helping to shape the preferences that the people exercise in a free market.

(8) Neoconservatives look upon family and religion as indispensable pillars of a decent society.

Each collection of essays deserves five stars, yet I would not recommend buying all three. The first edition, "Reflections" (1986) is the best. I recommend this book without reservation. It is shorter, and more focused on political thought. It contains the important articles on Adam Smith and Machiavelli and Kristol's thoughts on both. This book is sufficient for a good grasp of the early history and content of neoconservative thought.

A good, but not necessary, companion to Kristol's own Reflections is his widow Himmelfarb's compilation (2009); although it contains many articles on Judaism and Christianity which are tangential to the principal theme of neo-conservatism. Kristol's "The autobiography of an idea" edition (1999) suffers from too many duplicated articles from the "Reflections" edition. It is also over-long and less politically focused.

Kristol has been a towering figure in the political thought and culture criticism of the modern era. His adult life was devoted to a relentless attack on the utopian nonsense of liberalism, in all its guises. But Kristol's neo-conservatism was almost exclusively concerned with domestic issues.

After the collapse of the Soviet empire a new generation, which included Irving's son, William Kristol, turned the focus of neo-conservatism outward, to include foreign policy. This wave of neocons evolved in the mid-1990s. Their ideas were born in a context where America suddenly became the uncontested and dominant world power. Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan are two leading thinkers of the new neo-conservatism, which holds that American power is a force for good and the expansion of democracy will be a good thing for the world, as well as for America. This is the neo-conservatism that is so controversial today.

Irving Kristol did not live long enough to engage himself in this new direction of neo-conservatism. By the time the "new" neoconservatism evolved he had long since started referring to himself as a "conservative", without the "neo". His legacy is the essentially conservative influence he brought to bear on the domestic liberal thought of his generation
7 people found this helpful
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David Swan
4.0 out of 5 stars Father of modern Conservative Punditry
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2005
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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
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Chanel愛好者
3.0 out of 5 stars Not finished yet.
Reviewed in Japan on December 4, 2022
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Adrian J. Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars An insightful overview of issues of the Modern Right
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 20, 2004
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Irving Kristol, a writer and thinker par excellence, provides us with a compendium of wide ranging focal points in the modern conservative movement. A highly pragmatic account from a man who has been an adherent of the Marxist left, a journalist and ultimately a new spokesman for the values and intellectual reasoning behind modern conservatism. Not a work on foreign policy, as people may assume since the the title has become indexical of hawkish policy elites, Mr Kristol leaves the arena of foreign policy to his son Bill, who is a very worthy heir to the throne.
8 people found this helpful
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