Robert Howse, Leo Strauss: Man of Peace

Happy holidays to all. If you have an Amazon or Barnes & Noble or what-have-you book certificate lying around from the holidays, I'm happy to recommend a new-ish book by our friend and occasional Prawfsblawgger (and one of my former teachers) Robert Howse, Leo Strauss: Man of Peace. We have been behind the times here recently at Prawfsblawg. On the whole, given the times, I think that's a good place to be. But there are exceptions, and this is one of them: the official publication date of the book was mid-September, and we should have been shouting it from the rooftops long before now. My attention was called to the book by this review of it at The National Interest. And here is a review in the LA Review of Books. The book is also available on Kindle, so there's no reason you shouldn't own it seconds after looking at this post. Congrulations on the book, Rob! Here's a book description from Amazon:

Leo Strauss is known to many people as a thinker of the right, who inspired hawkish views on national security and perhaps even advocated war without limits. Moving beyond gossip and innuendo about Strauss's followers and the Bush administration, this book provides the first comprehensive analysis of Strauss's writings on political violence, considering also what he taught in the classroom on this subject. In stark contrast to popular perception, Strauss emerges as a man of peace, favorably disposed to international law and skeptical of imperialism - a critic of radical ideologies (right and left) who warns of the dangers to free thought and civil society when philosophers and intellectuals ally themselves with movements that advocate violence. Robert Howse provides new readings of Strauss's confrontation with fascist/Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, his debate with Alexandre Kojève about philosophy and tyranny, and his works on Machiavelli and Thucydides and examines Strauss's lectures on Kant's Perpetual Peace and Grotius's Rights of War and Peace.