ABSTRACT
In the 1980s many Straussians rose to high place in the Reagan administration, particularly in foreign affairs and in agencies such as the NEH, USIA, and Department of Education. Shadia Drury maintains that such claims highlight a basic contradiction characteristic of the Straussian involvement in education and politics. In her newest book Drury offers fresh interpretive insight about her subjects. She points to a plausible genealogy for the evolution of the Straussian Kojevian thinking—and derivatively of the political currents to which it has contributed. Drury understands and documents this Straussian Kojevian connection. She also makes clear that Straussian hermeneutics and Kojevian Hegelianism are both concerned with the exercise of power—and not merely with speculative questions. Drury may have no use for either Straussians or postmodernist, but what she does not demonstrate to this critic's satisfaction is that they overlap.
