Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999)

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States for the first term, and the conservative revolution that was slowly developing in the United States finally emerged in full-throated roar. Who provoked the conservative revolution? Shadia Drury provides a fascinating answer to the question as she looks at the work of Leo Strauss, a seemingly reclusive German-Jewish emigre and scholar who was one of the most influential individuals in the neoconservative movement, a man widely seen as the godfather of the Republican party's "Contract with America." Drury delves deeply into his work at the University of Chicago, where he taught his students that, if they truly loved America, they must save her from her fateful enchantment with liberalism.