Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement offers a critical analysis of the intellectual transformation of the influential movement. Author Justin Vaïsse traces the evolution of neoconservatism in three stages from its origins in the 1960s as an attempt to divert the Democratic Party from the excesses of the New Left, through its alliance with the Reagan Administration in the 1980s, before it finally became a faction of the Republican Right in the 1990s.

Joining Vaïsse at a Wilson Center book discussion will be James Mann, author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and Samuel F. Wells, Jr., senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Justin Vaïsse is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy and director of research for the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE). Previously, he served as a special adviser on the United States and transatlantic relations at the Centre d'Analyse et de Prévision (the Policy Planning Staff) of the French Foreign Ministry. Vaisse is the author or co-author of several books on American foreign policy, including the award-winning L'empire du milieu. Les Etats-Unis et le monde depuis la fin de la guerre froide (2001), co-authored with Pierre Melandri and Washington et le monde. Dilemmes d'une superpuissance (2003) co-authored with Pierre Hassner.


James Mann is author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS.) He is a former Washington Correspondent and Beijing Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times. His books include The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression (2007), Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (2004), About Face: A History of America's Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton (1999), and Beijing Jeep (1989). Mann's latest book is The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (2009).

Samuel. F. Wells, Jr. is a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. A specialist on international security affairs, he has published widely on U.S. strategy and transatlantic relations. He was co-editor and a contributor to The Strategic Triangle: France, Germany, and the Shaping of the New Europe (2006). His latest publication is with Sherrill B. Wells "Germany's Choice of Shared Sovereignty in the European Union" in Richard Rosecrance, Ernest R. May, and Zara Steiner (eds.), History and Neorealism (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).