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Michael Anton is best known for his famous "Flight 93" election essay that appeared seemingly out of the blue in September 2016, though many of us have long known of his qualities as a writer and thinker. He told me later that he never expected the "Flight 93" article to be a huge sensation, but after Rush Limbaugh read the entire essay on all three hours of his broadcast when it appeared—which in turn crashed the servers of the Claremont Review of Books where the essay was posted online—it took its place among the most memorable election broadsides in American history. New York magazine said the essay "defined the Trump era," and it remains a subject of intense controversy and criticism a decade later.
But beyond politics, people started to recognize that Michael is one of the finest essayists on the scene today, across a broad range of topics. He has two brand new books out that display both the reach of his topical interests and his supreme intellect.
The first is an essay collection entitled Dispatches from the Late Republic: The Culture, Politics, and Prophets of American Greatness, Decline and Rebirth. It ranges from his fine-grained autopsies of our mutual home state of California, several treatments of Tom Wolfe, who he was lucky enough to meet on several occasions, along with recollections of great teachers and friends such as Harry Jaffa, Tom West, John Marini, and Michael Uhlmann. There's a section on foreign policy, with special insight from his time on Trump's National Security Council and in the State Department. There's even a chapter about cooking—did I mention that Michael is also a serious chef, who was allowed to "work the line" in the White House kitchen for an official state dinner. The point is, the book is a feast in every sense.
His second book, coming next month, is Studies in Machiavellian Political Philosophy, which will firmly establish his reputation as one of the leading interpreters of the famous Florentine. These essays, most of which appeared in academic journals, do plumb the complex depths of this infamous thinker, but always in prose that is not as impenetrable as a Machiavelli himself, not to mention some of his modern interpreters who simply add to our confusion and misperception of the man.
We also talk a bit about Montesquieu, Xenophon, and some of our favorite classroom experiences.