Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialouges, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, May 2009), 896 pages.

The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy, with Michael P. Zuckert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 352 pages.

Postmodern Platos:  Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss and Derrida (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1996), 351 pages.

Natural Right and the American Imagination: Political Philosophy in Novel Form (Savage, Md: Rowman and Littlefield, 1990), 277 pages. 

PSP Award for the Most Outstanding Book Published in Religion and Philosophy in 1990 by the Association of American Publishers

Understanding the Political Spirit:  Philosophical Reflections from Socrates to Nietzsche, editor and author of comprehensive introduction (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1988), 203 pages.

Choice award--best books published in political theory in 1989--American Library Association

Book Chapters (Refereed)

“Tom Sawyer:  Potential President?” Democratic Literature, ed. Patrick Deneen and Joseph Romance (Lanham, MD:  Rowman & Littlefield, 2005): 61-78; reprinted in Liberty and Literature, ed. Edward B. McLean (ISI Publications, 2006).

“Why Tyranny Today?” Confronting Tyranny, ed. Toivo Koinvukoski and David Tabachnick (Lanham, MD:  Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

“Leo Strauss:  Jewish, Yes, but Heideggerian?” in Jewish Heideggerians, ed. Sam Fleischacker (New York: Ashgate Press, forthcoming 2006).

“Fackenheim and Strauss,” The Philosopher as Witness:  Fackenheim and Responses to the Holocaust, ed. Michael Morgan and Ben Pollock (Albany: SUNY Press, forthcoming 2006).

"On the Politics of Gadamerian Hermeneutics," in Bruce Krajewski, ed., Gadamieran Repercussions: Philosophical Hermeneutics Reconsidered (Berkeley:  University of California 2004), pp. 229-43.  (The chapter by Ronald Beiner is a response to the discussion of Gadamer in my Postmodern Platos, and there are two responses to my critique of their arguments by Orozo and Waite in this volume.)

“New Readings of Plato’s Republic,” in Ann Michelini, ed., Plato as Author (Leiden: E. K. Brill, Press, 2003), pp. 345-69.

"Empirical Political Theory 1997--Who's Kissing Him/Her Now?" (with Michael Zuckert) in Kristen R. Monroe, ed., Contemporary Political Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997): 143-65.

"Fortune Is a Woman--But So Is Prudence:  Machiavelli's Clizia," Finding a New Feminism:  Rethinking the Woman Question in Liberal Democracy, Pamela Jensen, ed. (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996): 23-37; reprinted in Maria J Falco, Feminist Interpretations of Niccolo Machiavelli (University Park, PA:  Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004): 197-212.

"The Novelist Who Corrupted American Mores," What Happened to Covenant in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Daniel Elazar (Lanham:  Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), pp. 209-31.

"The Novel as a Form of American Political Thought," in Reading Political Stories: Representations of Politics in Novels and Pictures, ed. Maureen Whitebrook (Savage, Maryland:  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1992): 167-204.

"Political Sociology vs. Speculative Philosophy," in Ken Masugi, ed., Interpreting Tocqueville’s DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA (Savage, Maryland:  Rowman & Littlefield, 1991): 121-52.

"On the Theory of Political Economy:  Is Liberalism Really Dead?" in Norman J. Vig and Steven Schier, The Political Economy of Western Democracies (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985): 19-45.

“Practical Plato,” Cambridge Companion to Ancient Political Thought, ed. Stephen Salkever (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2007).

“Why Talk About Tyranny Today,” Confronting Tyranny, ed. Toivo Koivukoski and David Edward Tabachnick (Lanham, MD:  Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 1-8.

“Hermeneutics in Practice: Gadamer on the Ancients,” Cambridge Companion to Gadamer,  ed. Robert Dostal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 201-24.

 “Introduction,” Politics and Literature, special issue, Legal Studies Forum, Vol. 22, No. 4 (1998), pp. 529-34.

"Why Political Scientists Study Fiction," The Chronicle of  Higher Education, Vol. 17, No. 26 (March 8, 1996): A48; reprinted in The Howard University Reader (McGraw Hill, 1997).

"Aristotle's Practical Political Science," Politikos II: Educating the Ambitious (Dusquesne University Press, 1992), pp. 144-65.

"Religion in America--150 Years Later," in Eduardo Nolla, ed., Liberty, Equality, Democracy (New York:  New York University Press, 1992); reprinted in Peter A. Lawler, ed., Tocqueville’s Defense of Human Liberty (New York:  Garland Publishing, 1992), pp. 223-40.

"On the Inevitable Growth of Big Government," in Jackson Barlow and John West, ed., The New Federalist Papers (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), pp. 160-62.

"The Political Lessons of Economic Life," in Mary P. Nichols, ed., Readings in American Government, 2nd, 3rd ed. (Dubuque, Ia.:  Kendall-Hunt, 1978, 1983, 1990, 1996, 2001), pp. 496-507.

Machiavellian Politics--In a book-length study, I am emphasizing Machiavelli’s political analysis and advice to his readers rather than his alleged moral “revolution.”   In contrast to Patrick Coby and in partial opposition to Quentin Skinner, I argue that Machiavelli uses Rome to criticize Sparta as the model of republican government, but that having displaced the classical “aristocratic” notion of republicanism with a nascent model of checks and balances, he then becomes critical of Roman practice as well.  Machiavelli explicitly recognizes that Roman conquests eventually destroyed freedom not only in the rest of the world but also in Rome itself.  Rome is not and cannot, therefore, be simply the model of a free government.  Machiavelli is presenting and recommending a new understanding of republican politics along with an analysis of the tyrannical alternative that remains an ever-present possibility.