| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

James Burnham and the Struggle for the World: A Life. By Daniel Kelly. (Wilmington, Del.: ISI, 2002. xxiv, 443 pp. $29.95, ISBN 1-882926-76-5.)

Principles and Heresies: Frank S. Meyer and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement. By Kevin J. Smant. (Wilmington, Del.: ISI, 2002. xxii, 390 pp. $29.95, ISBN 1-882926-72-2.)

It is ironic that, even as American conservatism has become more powerful than ever before, many of the modern Right's founding intellectuals have slid into obscurity. New biographies of two of these figures, James Burnham and Frank S. Meyer, provide perspectives on their roles in shaping conservative ideas and politics.

In James Burnham and the Struggle for the World, Daniel Kelly presents a solid intellectual biography of one of the postwar Right's most influential thinkers on foreign affairs and power politics. Burnham (1905–1987) began his career on the left, as a major figure among American Trotskyites during the 1930s. But Burnham also was well schooled in philosophy and literature, and his scholarly orientation—he taught philosophy at New York University from 1929 to 1949—made him an independent thinker. He broke with Leon Trotsky over the question of how to respond to the Hitler-Stalin Pact; by 1943 he had given up Marxism altogether, become a hard-line anticommunist, and joined the New York intellectuals clustered around Partisan Review. After World War II, Burnham consulted for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) on political warfare and helped establish the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Burnham worked with anticommunist liberals until 1954, by which time his hard-line views led many to view him as a McCarthy sympathizer. From then on he no longer was welcome among liberals; he found a new base at the fledgling National Review and became conservatism's leading interpreter of foreign affairs and Cold War strategy until a stroke in 1978 forced him to stop writing.

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