The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas In the Fifties.

Glencoe, Ill: The Free Press, 1960. First edition of this landmark in American social thought. Octavo, original half cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper in the year of publication, "For Irving and Bea- Butforis - prim, prima with affection Dan - 2/12/60." The recipients were Irving Kristol and his wife Gertrude Himmelfarb, who were close friends of Bell's. Kristol was a journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism." Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, also known as Bea Kristol, was an American historian who was a leader of conservative interpretations of history and historiography. Bell and Kristol were close friends, who jointly founded The Public Interest in 1965. It was a leading neoconservative journal on political economy and culture, aimed at a readership of journalists, scholars and policy makers. With some marginalia by Kristol, very good in a good dust jacket. An exceptional association, linking these giants of conservatism. The End of Ideology was one of the most influential, most controversial, and most misunderstood books about the 1950s. But it is not simply a central text of the intellectual history of those years (although it certainly is that). It is also a provocative discussion by one of America's most creative thinkers of political and philosophical issues that concern us still" (Alan Brinkley). The End of Ideology was named by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the 100 most influential books since the end of World War II.