The Ger­man-Jew­ish immi­grant philoso­pher Leo Strauss is known to many peo­ple as a thinker of the right, who inspired hawk­ish views on nation­al secu­ri­ty and per­haps even advo­cat­ed war with­out lim­its. Chal­leng­ing this rep­u­ta­tion, the book pro­vides the first com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of Strauss’s writ­ings on polit­i­cal vio­lence. The author shows that although Strauss was attract­ed to the intel­lec­tu­al right in Weimar Ger­many, by his ear­ly thir­ties he was turn­ing in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, influ­enced by Greek phi­los­o­phy and the study of medieval Jew­ish thought. In many mature works that addressed extreme vio­lence, Strauss tack­led at its roots the mind­set that seduced him as a youth, pro­found­ly cri­tiquing it, and engag­ing in a kind of teshu­vah in rela­tion to his ini­tial mis­step. Strauss emerges as a man of peace, favor­ably dis­posed to inter­na­tion­al law and skep­ti­cal of impe­ri­al­ism, who ends up affirm­ing his alle­giance both to lib­er­al democ­ra­cy and the Jew­ish people.