LAWLER, Peter Augustine 1951-

PERSONAL: Born July 30, 1951, in Alexandria, VA; son of Thomas C. and Patricia Ann (Fullerton) Lawler; married Rita Kay Schnauck, September 6, 1979; children: Catherine Mary. Education: Allentown College, B.A., 1973; University of Virginia, M.A., 1975, Ph.D., 1978.

ADDRESSES: Home—308 East 5th Avenue, Rome, GA 30161. Office—Berry College, Box 118, Mount Berry, GA 30161.

CAREER: Educator and writer. Florida Southern College, Lakeland, FL, instructor, 1978-79; Berry College, Mt. Berry, GA, 1979—, assistant professor, 1979-83, associate professor of political science, beginning 1983, currently Dana Professor and Chair of the Department of Government.

MEMBER: American Political Science Association (grantee, 1980).

AWARDS, HONORS: Grant from American Political Science Association, 1980; Mellon Foundation grant, 1981; Lilly Foundation grant, 1983, 1985; Claremont Institute grant, 1985; various other grants, including Liberty Fund and Earhart Foundation.

WRITINGS:

The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the Origin and Perpetuation of Human Liberty, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1993.

Under God with Liberty: The Religious Dimension of the American Idea of Liberty, Hollowbrook (Durango, CO), 1994.

A Question of Values: John Galtung's Peace Research, Lynne Rienner (Boulder, CO), 1995.

American Views of Liberty, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1997.

Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return toRealism in American Thought, Rowman & Little-field (Lanham, MD), 1999.

Aliens in America: The Strange Truth about Our Souls, ISI Books (Wilmington, DE), 2002.

EDITOR

(With Robert Martin Schaefer) American PoliticalRhetoric: A Reader, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1982, fourth edition, 2001.

Tocqueville's Political Science: Classic Essays, Garland (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor, with Joseph Alulis) Tocqueville's Defense ofHuman Liberty: Current Essays, Garland (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Robert Martin Schaefer) The American Experiment: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Liberty, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1994.

(With Joseph M. Knippenberg) Poets, Princes, andPrivate Citizens, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1996.

(With Robert Martin Schaefer and David Lewis Schaefer) Active Duty: Public Administration As Democratic Statesmanship, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1998.

(With Dale McConkey) Community and Political Thought Today, Praeger (Westport, CT), 1998.

(With David Coates) New Labour in Power, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Dale McConkey) Social Structures, Social Capital, and Personal Freedom, Praeger (Westport, CT), 2000.

(With Dale McConkey) Faith, Reason, and PoliticalLife Today, Lexington Books (Lanham, MD), 2001.

(With Dale McConkey) Faith, Morality, and Civil Society, Lexington Books (Lanham, MD), 2003.

Editor of periodicals, including American Political Rhetoric, 1982, and Perspectives on Political Science.

SIDELIGHTS: Peter Augustine Lawler has written numerous books on political science, with a particular focus on the idea of liberty and one of its champions, Alexis de Tocqueville. One of Lawler's best-known books is The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the Origin and Perpetuation of Human Liberty, a study of the famous nineteenth-century political theorist. According to Sanford Lakoff's analysis of the book in American Political Science Review, Lawler sees de Tocqueville as a "moral philosopher" who embraced a Christian view of equality and liberty as the foundation of a democratic society. A reviewer in Choice noted that the book is "both topical and historical," and that it "synthesizes Tocqueville's thought into a convenient, thoughtful, critical analysis of an influential postmodern writer."

In American Views of Liberty, Lawler presented some of his essays in a collection that "challenges conventional assumptions about the meaning of liberty in America," stated Aaron D. Hoffman in Perspectives on Political Science. Hoffman recommended this book "to all who want to delve deeper into issues of political theory and human liberty," but advised that it is challenging reading, "most suitable for graduate students or above with advanced knowledge of the American Framing, liberalism, and Straussian political thought. It will be fruitful for readers . . . who have pondered whether the basis of liberalism is secular or Christian."

Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought is "deeply serious and richly thought-provoking," in the opinion of Thomas L. Pangle, a contributor to American Political Science Review. In it, Lawler looks at the gap between the common understanding of postmodernism, which is rooted in the idea that human existence is groundless, and the author's conception of the correct understanding of postmodernism, which is based in the notion that humans exist to understand reality, not to transform it. The book is "an enlightening treatment of contemporary American intellectual thought" that should prove "eminently interesting not only to specialists in political philosophy and students of post-modernism (rightly or wrongly understood), but even to casual observers of American letters," claimed Paul Howard in Perspectives on Political Science. Lawler provides a critique of various perspectives on post-modernism by interpreting five best-selling American authors: Francis Fukuyama, Richard Rorty, Allan Bloom, Walker Percy, and Christopher Lasch. Fukuyama and Rorty represent the incorrect or pragmatic notion of postmodernism, in Lawler's view; Percy and Lasch portray postmodernism "rightly understood," and Bloom is somewhere in the middle. Lawler's book was praised by Pangle especially for its "illuminating introduction to Percy."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Political Science Review, March, 1994, p. 212; December, 2000, Thomas L. Pangle, review of Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought, p. 931.

Booklist, June 1, 2002, Ray Olson, review of Aliens inAmerica: The Strange Truth about Our Souls, p. 1653.

Choice, November, 1993, p. 536; June, 1995, p. 1669; June, 1999, review of Active Duty: Public Administration As Democratic Statesmanship, p. 1869.

Journal of American History, March, 1995, p. 1712.

Perspectives on Political Science, spring, 1999, Aaron D. Hoffman, review of American Views of Liberty, p. 117; fall, 1999, Marc Guerra, review of Community and Political Thought Today, p. 219; spring, 2000, Paul Howard, review of Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought, p. 119; winter, 2000, Robert Laporte, Jr., review of Active Duty: Public Administration As Democratic Statesmanship,p. 36.

Reference and Research Book News, February, 1999, review of Community and Political Thought Today,p. 89, review of Active Duty: Public Administration As Democratic Statesmanship, p. 112.

Reference and Research Book Reviews, October, 1992, p. 20.*