Reflections of a Neoconservative by {author}: summary and why it matters

What it argues

Kristol described a neoconservative as a liberal who had been mugged by reality. This collection of his essays from the 1970s and early 1980s traces how disillusioned liberals came to criticize the Great Society, the adversary culture of intellectuals and the new class of professionals who profit from government programs.

He argues that capitalism has been successful but is not self-justifying: it lives off moral capital from older religious and bourgeois traditions that it tends to erode. Without a sense of civic virtue, he says, a commercial society loses its legitimacy. He defends supply-side economics as pragmatic, calls for a foreign policy of national interest conceived broadly, and writes about the role of religion and about art and censorship.

The tone is witty and unsystematic, a series of arguments from experience rather than a philosophical treatise.

Why it matters

Kristol shaped think tanks, magazines and ideas that influenced the Reagan era and after. The book is the best primary source for understanding what neoconservatism meant before the term became a label for foreign policy.

About the author

Irving Kristol (1920-2009) was born in Brooklyn, studied at City College of New York where he joined a Trotskyist circle, and worked as an editor at Commentary, Encounter and The Public Interest, which he founded with Daniel Bell. He taught at New York University and wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal. He is the father of the journalist William Kristol.

Who should read it

Readers interested in how the modern right was assembled, and general readers who enjoy sharp essays.