Irving Kristol, the "godfather" of neoconservatism and one of our most important public intellectuals, played an influential role in development of American intellectual and political culture over past half century. These essays, many hard to find and reprinted here for the first time since their initial appearance, are a survey of intellectual development of one of the progenitors of neoconservatism. Kristol wrote on a broad range of topics from W.H. Auden to Ronald Reagan, from neoconservative movement's roots in the 1940s at City College to American foreign policy, from religion to capitalism. Kristol's writings provide us a unique guide to development of neoconservatism as one of the leading strains of thought, one of leading "persuasions" in recent American political and intellectual history.