Books, Arts & Manners: An Idea and Its Consequences

Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, by Irving Kristol (Free Press, 493 pp., $25)

IRVING Kristol’s memoirs, a collection of the articles he wishes to remember, shine with his charm and his intellectual mastery. He starts with a new “autobiographical memoir” in which he mentions that when he was young and needed a job, Sidney Hook would come to the rescue. With that example, Kristol himself has come to the rescue of many conservative graduate students, some of them mine. His son, William, for whom he bears a greater responsibility, was also a student of mine. But I am going to show that gratitude in a reviewer can sometimes be an aid, not a hindrance, to doing justice to an author.

About the Author

Harvey C. Mansfield

Harvey C. Mansfield is the Kenan Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1962. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

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Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, by Irving Kristol (Free Press, 493 pp., $25)

IRVING Kristol’s memoirs, a collection of the articles he wishes to remember, shine with his charm and his intellectual mastery. He starts with a new “autobiographical memoir” in which he mentions that when he was young and needed a job, Sidney Hook would come to the rescue. With that example, Kristol himself has come to the rescue of many conservative graduate students, some of them mine. His son, William, for whom he bears a greater responsibility, was also a student of mine. But I am going to show that gratitude in a reviewer can sometimes be an aid, not a hindrance, to doing justice to an author.

About the Author

Harvey C. Mansfield

Harvey C. Mansfield is the Kenan Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1962. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.