David T. Bynre has assembled the first academic biography of James Burnham, a whip-smart and acerbic 20th century political mind. The main argument is Burnham was an important intellectual forefather of two distinct traditions of thought on the contemporary political right, neo-conservatism and paleo-conservatism. Byrne chronologically walks readers through Burnham's intellectual trajectory from formal logician/bourgeois academic to Marxist intellectual (specifically friendly to Trotskyism) to elite theorist to anti-communist Cold War pragmatist/realist to a devastating critic of liberalism. Byrne provides close readings of Burnham's major works (The Managerial Revolution, The Machiavellians, The Struggle for the World, The Coming Defeat of Communism, The Web of Subversion, The Suicide of the West) while following this trajectory. Byrne also interjects with occasional connections to modern echoes of Burnham's thought on the Right. There are two major inflection points in Burnham's political journey: 1) the obvious failures of Soviet communism to provide material prosperity and political equality. 2) liberal hand-wringing during Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist crusades. These are mapped persuasively but sometimes Byrne's subject's deeper motivations remains enigmatic. Additionally, I think in some ways the author oversells Burnham's political evolution. From what I see in the analysis is that Burnham always remained clear-eyed and rational about the nature and operation of political power. The bigger shift was a transition from an intellectual to a live player in the political arena. He became sufficiently activated by concerns about communism and domestic weakness concerning strategies for defeating communism and that induced him to act more directly for his interests.

In many ways, it is infuriating that Burnham hasn't already been subject to extensive study in the fields of political theory and intellectual history. This work makes it implicitly clear that Burnham has been systematically overlooked by intellectual histories especially those that analyze or celebrate figures like George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Sidney Hook, John Dewey, Arthur M. Schlesinger, John Kenneth Galbraith, George Kennan. I hope this is just a first step and that the academy will welcome the study of Burnham. In my view, The Machiavellians is Burnham's most important accomplishment as it re-animated an important body of political thought, elite theory, that does away with the obvious failures and moral positioning of Marxism. Today, there are many live players working to sustain and explain Burnham's insights (e.g. Marc Andreessen), but this has mostly been an outside game narrowcast to a small subset of elite aspirants. The world should have a greater awareness of Burnham and his ideas.

I strongly recommend this work.