| Editor: | Charles R. Kesler |
| Editor Title2: | Managing Editor |
| Editor2: | John Kienker |
| Editor Title3: | Senior Editor |
| Editor3: | William Voegeli |
| Frequency: | Quarterly |
| Circulation: | 14,000 |
| Publisher: | Ryan Williams |
| Company: | The Claremont Institute |
| Country: | United States |
| Based: | Claremont, California |
| Language: | English |
| Issn: | 1554-0839 |
| Oclc: | 184908708 |
The Claremont Review of Books (CRB) is a quarterly review of politics and statesmanship published by the conservative Claremont Institute. A typical issue consists of several book reviews and a selection of essays on topics of conservatism and political philosophy, history, and literature.[1] Authors who are regularly featured in the Review are sometimes nicknamed "Claremonsters."[2] [3]
The editor is Charles R. Kesler. The managing editor is John Kienker, and the senior editor, William Voegeli. 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,[4] Allen C. Guelzo, Joseph Epstein, Hadley P. Arkes, and John Marini.
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.
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."[1] In 2017 it had about 14,000 subscribers.
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 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.[5]
The Review took a pro-Trump position during the 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.".[6] 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.[1] According to the New York Times, in the spring of 2017 the Review was "being hailed as the bible of highbrow Trumpism."[7] [1]
Jon Baskin understood the Review
During the George W. Bush administration, the Review "made a conservative case against the war in Iraq."[7]
Kesler's "Democracy and the Bush Doctrine"[8] was reprinted in an anthology of conservative writings on the Iraq War, edited by 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 Bush Administration’s conduct of the Iraq War.
In September 2016, two months before the US 2016 presidential election, the Review published an online-only article entitled "The Flight 93 Election."[9] Written by Michael Anton under a pseudonym, the essay compared the election to choices that faced the passengers on Flight 93, one of the four hijacked planes used in the 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.[10] Addressing an audience of Republicans and 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.