Even more than the happy personal news I announced here last month, about my forthcoming move from the Philadelphia suburbs to Center City Philly, I'm thrilled to let my subscribers know that over the next two years I will be writing a book for Princeton University Press! Secrets of the Sphinx: Leo Strauss and the Hidden Truths of the American Right (my current, and possibly temporary, title) is a book I've been talking about for a long time. In fact, I've been under contract for nearly ten years to write it for another university press. But that's actually not quite accurate. The Strauss book I originally proposed was quite different than the one I will begin writing this summer. When I first proposed writing a book about Leo Strauss, it was going to avoid talking very much about his influence on American conservatives. I'd mention the controversy that swirled around his legacy circa 2003, when many in the press decided he was the philosophic guru who persuaded a faction of...
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