By Francis P. Sempa James Burnham (1905–1987), who became a leading anti-communist and prominent intellectual figure in American conservatism, began his professional intellectual career as a Marxist. His early writings appeared in leading Marxist and socialist...
By Francis P. Sempa Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) was both a theologian (teaching at Union Theological Seminary for over thirty years) and a public intellectual. The American diplomat and realist historian George F. Kennan called Niebuhr “the father of us all,” meaning...
By Francis P. Sempa James Burnham (1905–1987) was an American political philosopher and public intellectual who traveled the intellectual journey from Marxism (the Trotskyite version) to conservatism. When he broke with Marxism in the late 1930s, he began writing for...
Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer. Knopf, 2019. Hardcover, 608 pages, $30. Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa Richard Holbrooke’s life and career as a member of the American foreign policy establishment symbolized the decline...
The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War by Michael Cotey Morgan, Princeton University Press, 2018. Hardcover, 424 pages, $35. Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa People have a tendency, when they expend much time and energy working on a...