The Gentleman from New York

The Gentleman from New York
Daniel Patrick Moyniham - a biography
Geoffrey Hobson
Houghton Mifflin, 2000

I'd like to signal you a good biography of Daniel Patrick Moyniham that describes the fervor of the 1970s which turned a number of liberals into neocons - Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Richard Perle. Who thought the most ardent critics of liberalism were fallen angels. (Or were they the real liberals?)

Moynihan had his own ideological tribulations, as a Johnson democrat working for Nixon, then as a conservative Democrat Senator upset with Carter, then as the main Senate foe of Reagan, then as the main Democrat bent on sinking Hillary Care.

Incidentally, Moynihan was immersed in problems of education, and while at Harvard he ran with Thomas Pettigrew a seminar on the celebrated Coleman report. That must have been quite a seminar... I've found a good cursory description of it here (p. 352) by Geoffrey Hobson, same as the author of the Moynihan biography.