In 1979, Peter Steinfels identified a new movement and predicted it would be the decade's most enduring legacy to American politics. In a new Introduction he describes its evolution from a reaction to Sixties' social change into an entrenched political force promoting an assertive, even belligerent, foreign policy. More than three decades ago, in The Neoconservatives, Peter Steinfels described a nascent movement, predicting that it would be the sixties' "most enduring legacy to American politics." Now, in a new foreword to that portrait, he traces neoconservatism's fateful transformation. What was a movement of dissenting intellectuals creating a new, modern kind of conservatism became a phalanx of political insiders urging the nation to flex its muscles overseas.
The Neoconservatives describes the founders of the movement, disenchanted liberals recoiling from the turmoil of the sixties, a decline in authority, and a loss of tough-minded leadership at home and abroad. Written contemporaneously to the birth of a movement that would profoundly mark American history,
The Neoconservatives holds clues, Stein-fels argues, to how and why neoconservatism swerved from its original promise even as it successfully implanted itself as an influential and aggressive element in our politics. This is a landmark book, "an important contribution to understanding the influence of ideas on American politics" (
Congress Monthly).
Author: Peter Steinfels
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 11/19/2013
Series: Bestselling Political Nonfiction
Pages: 384
Weight: 0.73lbs
Size: 8.45h x 5.50w x 1.02d
ISBN: 9781476728834
About the AuthorSteinfels, Peter: -
Peter Steinfels, former co-director of the Fordham University Center on Religion and Culture, is a university professor at Fordham. He was religion columnist for
The New York Times and editor of
Commonweal. Steinfels is the author of
A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (Simon & Schuster, 2003). He lives in New York City.