View source for Claremont Review of Books

{{short description|American magazine on politics and statesmanship}}
{{Infobox magazine
| title =
| logo =
| logo_size =
| image_file = <!-- cover.jpg (omit the "file: prefix -->
| image_size = <!-- (defaults to user thumbnail size if no size is stated) -->
| image_alt =
| image_caption =
| editor = [[Charles R. Kesler]]
| editor_title =
| editor_title2 = Managing Editor
| editor2 = John Kienker
| editor_title3 = Senior Editor
| editor3 = William Voegeli
| previous_editor =
| staff_writer =
| photographer =
| category =
| frequency = Quarterly
| circulation = 14,000{{efn|approximate subscribers for year 2017}}{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}
| publisher = Ryan Williams
| founder =
| founded = {{start date and age|2000|df=y|p=y}}
| firstdate = <!-- {{Start date|year|month|day}} -->
| company = [[The Claremont Institute]]
| country = [[United States]]
| based = [[Claremont, California]]
| language = English
| website = {{nowrap|{{official URL}}}}
| issn = 1554-0839
| oclc = 184908708
}}
{{Conservatism US|media}}
The '''''Claremont Review of Books''''' ('''''CRB''''') is a quarterly review of [[politics]] and [[diplomacy|statesmanship]] published by the conservative [[Claremont Institute]].  A typical issue consists of several book reviews and a selection of [[essay]]s on topics of [[conservatism]] and political philosophy, history, and literature.<ref name="Schuessler">{{cite news|last1=Schuessler|first1=Jennifer|date=20 February 2017|title='Charge the Cockpit or You Die': Behind an Incendiary Case for Trump|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/arts/charge-the-cockpit-or-you-die-behind-an-incendiary-case-for-trump.html|access-date=11 July 2019}}</ref> Authors who are regularly featured in the ''Review'' are sometimes nicknamed "Claremonsters."<ref name="Collaborators">{{cite news|title=The Unforgivables: Trump's Top Collaborators |url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unforgivables-trumps-top-collaborators|work=Daily Beast|date=19 October 2016}}</ref><ref name="HaywardConservatism">{{cite book|author=Steven F. Hayward|title=Patriotism Is Not Enough: Harry Jaffa, Walter Berns, and the Arguments that Redefined American Conservatism|date=2018|publisher=Encounter Books|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LHdVDwAAQBAJ&q=Claremonsters&pg=PT11 |access-date=12 July 2019|isbn=9781641770194 }}</ref>
The editor is [[Charles R. Kesler]]. The managing editor is John Kienker, and the senior editor, William Voegeli.<ref name="BaskinTrumpism"/> [[Joseph Tartakovsky]] is a contributing editor. Contributors have included [[William F. Buckley Jr.]], [[Harry V. Jaffa]], [[Mark Helprin]] (a columnist for the magazine), [[Victor Davis Hanson]], [[Michael Anton]], [[Diana Schaub]], Gerard Alexander, [[David P. Goldman]],<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/the-great-resenter/|title=The Great Resenter|website=www.claremont.org|access-date=1 March 2019}}</ref> [[Allen C. Guelzo]], [[Joseph Epstein (writer)|Joseph Epstein]], [[Hadley P. Arkes]], and [[John Marini]].
==History==
Legal scholar [[Ken Masugi]] was editor of the first iteration of the ''Claremont Review of Books'' which existed for just under two years in the mid-1980s. According to Jon Baskin, writing in the ''[[Chronicle of Higher Education]]'', it "looked more like a college newspaper," and had about 600 subscribers.<ref name="BaskinTrumpism"/>
The ''Review'' was re-established in 2000 under the editorship of [[Charles R. Kesler]] in what ''[[The New York Times]]'' described as "a conservative, if eclectic, answer to ''[[The New York Review of Books]]''."<ref name="Schuessler"/>  In 2017 it had about 14,000 subscribers.<ref name="BaskinTrumpism"/>{{cn|date=July 2023}}
==Political positions==
According to historian [[George H. Nash]], the editors and writers at Claremont are [[Straussian]] intellectually, heavily influenced by the ideas of [[Leo Strauss]] and his student [[Harry V. Jaffa]].  In their view, the [[Progressive Era]] culminating in the Presidency of [[Woodrow Wilson]] marked an ideological and political repudiation of political ideals of the Constitution and the [[Founding Fathers of the United States|American Founders]], replacing a carefully limited government with government by experts and bureaucrats who were insulated from popular consent. They saw similar threats in the presidency of [[Barack Obama]].<ref name="NashAbove">{{cite news|author=George H. Nash|title=An Outcry Against Government From Above |url=https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/10/10/hating-woodrow-wilson/an-outcry-against-government-from-above |access-date=11 July 2019|work=The New York Times|date=10 October 2010|author-link=George H. Nash}}</ref>
The ''Review'' took a pro-Trump position during the [[2016 United States elections|2016 election campaign]], with an article by Charles Kessler criticizing the [[Never Trump movement]]. "Conservatives care too much about the party and the country to wash our hands of this election," he wrote. "A third party bid would be quixotic.".<ref name="BarnesIntellectuals">{{cite journal|author=Fred Barnes|title=Trump's Intellectuals|journal=The Weekly Standard|date=6 June 2016|volume=21|issue=37}}</ref> Nevertheless, the ''Review'' published articles by both Trump supporters and "Never Trumpers" during the 2016 campaign, moving after his election to a thoroughly pro-Trump position.<ref name="Schuessler"/>  According to the ''New York Times,'' in the spring of 2017 the ''Review'' was "being hailed as the bible of highbrow Trumpism."<ref name="BaskinTrumpism">{{cite news|author=Jon Baskin|title=The Academic Home of Trumpism|url=https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Academic-Home-of-Trumpism/239495|access-date=12 July 2019|work=Chronicle of Higher Education|date=17 March 2017}}</ref><ref name="Schuessler"/>
Jon Baskin understood the ''Review''<nowiki/>'s pro-Trump stance as "an expression of the belief that conservative intellectuals can cut a path between the East Coast Straussians' political reticence and the ineffectual tinkering of the think tankers," but was at a loss to explain "how a group so attached to the principles of the Constitution could place its faith in the author of ''[[The Art of the Deal]]''."<ref name="BaskinTrumpism"/>  According to senior editor William Voegeli, the reason lies in Kesler's scholarly examination of the origins of American progressivism.<ref name="BaskinTrumpism" /> In a series of articles and in his book ''I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Future of Liberalism,'' Kesler has argued that Woodrow Wilson and the first generations of American [[technocrats]] with PhDs earned at American universities produced the modern American "administrative state."  To Kesler and the other Claremonsters, the administrative state has not only produced a series of costly and ineffective social programs, it has eroded democratic norms, substituting the shallow certainties of social science.  In Baskin's phrasing, "one of the things that is most disturbing about Trump for liberal and conservative elites (including some East Coast Straussians)—his utter disdain for expertise and convention—is what is most promising about him from the point of view of the Claremonsters."<ref name="BaskinTrumpism"/>  As Voegeli put it, "Our view is that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, whereas progressives are inclined to think that government derives just powers from the expertise of the experts."<ref name="BaskinTrumpism"/>
During the [[George W. Bush]] administration, the ''Review'' "made a conservative case against the war in Iraq."<ref name="BaskinTrumpism"/>
==Notable articles==
Kesler's "Democracy and the Bush Doctrine"<ref name="Democracy and the Bush Doctrine">{{cite web |url=http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/winter2004/kesler.html |title=Democracy and the Bush Doctrine |publisher=The Claremont Institute for Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy|work=Claremont Review of Books|date=Winter 2004|access-date=15 April 2013|author=Kesler, Charles |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081006202813/http://claremont.org/writings/crb/winter2004/kesler.html |archive-date=6 October 2008|url-status=dead }}</ref> was reprinted in an anthology of conservative writings on the [[Iraq War]], edited by [[Commentary (magazine)|''Commentary'']] Managing Editor [[Gary Rosen]]. The ''CRB'' was party to a high-profile exchange in ''Commentary'' between Editor-at-Large [[Norman Podhoretz]] and CRB editor Charles R. Kesler and ''CRB'' contributors and Claremont Institute senior fellows Mark Helprin and Angelo M. Codevilla over the [[Presidency of George W. Bush|Bush Administration]]’s conduct of the Iraq War.
In September 2016, two months before the [[2016 United States presidential election|US 2016 presidential election]], the ''Review'' published an online-only article entitled "The Flight 93 Election."<ref name="The Flight 92 Election">{{cite web|url=https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/|title=The Flight 93 Election|author=Michael Anton (as "Publius Decius Mus")|publisher=The Claremont Institute for Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy|work=Claremont Review of Books|date=4 September 2016|access-date=19 July 2020}}</ref> Written by [[Michael Anton]] under a pseudonym, the essay compared the election to choices that faced the passengers on [[United Airlines Flight 93|Flight 93]], one of the four hijacked planes used in the [[September 11 attacks|September 11th attacks]]. When the article was read by [[Rush Limbaugh]] on his radio show, the sudden surge in demand to read it crashed the ''CRB'' website.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/magazine/claremont-institute-conservative.html |title=How the Claremont Institute Became a Nerve Center of the American Right |publisher=The New York Times|date=August 3, 2022|access-date=January 19, 2024|author=Zerofsky, Elisabeth}}</ref> Addressing an audience of Republicans and [[Never Trump movement|Never-Trump]] conservatives, Anton argued that allowing the Democratic candidate [[Hillary Clinton]] to become president by abstaining from voting was the equivalent of not charging the cockpit.
==Notes==
{{notelist}}
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
* {{official website}}
{{Conservatism US footer}}
{{Conservatism footer}}
[[Category:Book review magazines published in the United States]]
[[Category:Conservative magazines published in the United States]]
[[Category:Political magazines published in the United States]]
[[Category:Quarterly magazines published in the United States]]
[[Category:Magazines published in California]]
[[Category:2000 establishments in California]]
[[Category:Magazines established in 2000]]