Charles R. Kesler, an eminent scholar and prodigious editor, has exerted a profound influence on the study of American politics and the practice of American conservatism.
A precocious high-school student, he impressed a visiting William F. Buckley Jr. who, before becoming a life-long friend, wrote him a recommendation letter to Yale. Kesler asked for another—to Harvard, where he completed his undergraduate degree and earned a PhD under the legendary professor Harvey C. Mansfield. An early passion for political journalism, played out largely on the pages of
National Review
, led Kesler to author an
NR
cover story on his third great influence, Harry V. Jaffa.
Kesler became a faculty colleague of Jaffa’s at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate Universityand is perhaps best known as the editorial helmsman of the Claremont Review of Books. The author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism and Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness, Kesler also co-edited (with William F. Buckley Jr.) Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought. His edited volume of
The Federalist Papers
is the best-selling edition version in the country.
In this volume, Kesler’s students, friends, and colleagues commemorate his four-decade career as a teacher, mentor, and scholar.