Books by Steven B. Smith

Portrays the manmade landscape of the western United States. This title shows the surreal intersection of the American appetite for suburban development and the resistant, rolling, arid country of the desert West. It takes us into the contemporary reality of sprawling suburbs reconfiguring what was once vast, unpopulated territory.

Shows that Leo Strauss' defense of liberal democracy was closely connected to his skepticism of both the extreme Left and extreme Right. It assesses Strauss's attempt to direct teaching of political science away from examination of mass behavior and interest-group politics and toward study of philosophical principles on which politics are based.

Who ought to govern? Why should I obey the law? What is the proper education for a citizen and a statesman? These questions probe some of the deepest and most enduring problems that every society confronts, regardless of time and place. This book introduces the wide terrain of political philosophy through the classic texts of the discipline.