Peter Collier, Political Woman: The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick

Excerpt

Woodrow Wilson remains the most politically influential American political scientist. Best remembered as a formidable ambassador to the United Nations during the first term of the Reagan Administration, Jeane Kirkpatrick led a “little” life in comparison to Wilson but a decidedly “big” one compared to just about everyone else in her field. Born 70 years after Wilson, but only a few years after Wilson’s failed campaign to get the United States into the League of Nations he had designed, Kirkpatrick could assess the results of what Wilson brought to the public life of the country: the relationship of political science to the American regime; the implications of politics based upon an ontology of historical progress; the reconstitution of American political parties and administration; and of course the vision of liberal internationalism, institutionalized now in the League of Nations’ inheritor, the United Nations. Peter Collier has put his considerable experience as a biographer of major public figures to cogent use, bringing his readers right to the main lines of her story. …