AS Leo Strauss becomes more famous and books about him proliferate, it is important to remember, though easy to forget, that he was not the sinister godfather of the Right, nor the pied piper of so-called conservative values. During his most productive years, he taught in the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago as a professor of political science. There he wrote some of his most path-breaking books and attracted a number of students who became so devoted to him that they called themselves Straussians (I myself am one of them).