James Piereson - James Piereson is the director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for the American University and president of the William E. Simon Foundation. He served as the executive director of the John M. Olin Foundation for twenty years.
A former political science professor, his latest book is Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism.
Peter Robinson - Peter M. Robinson is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics, edits Hoover's quarterly journal, the Hoover Digest, and hosts Hoover's television program, Uncommon Knowledge.
Robinson is also the author of three books: How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life; It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP; and the best-selling business book Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA.
In Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, James Piereson asserts that, "as the 1960's began, liberalism was...the single most creative and vital force in American politics" and that the Kennedy assassination caused a split within this movement between its more traditional supporters and cultural activists that still exists today.
Peter Robinson explores with Piereson how and why this happened -- how "a confident, practical, forward-looking philosophy with a heritage of accomplishment was thus turned into a doctrine of pessimism and self-blame, with a decidedly dark view of American society"- Hoover Institution