Acts of Recovery: Essays on Culture and Politics

Jeffrey Peter Hart was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 24, 1930. He received a bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1952. During the Korean War, he enlisted in the Navy and served in Naval Intelligence. After he was discharged, he received a doctorate in 17th- and 18th-century English literature from Columbia. He soon began writing book reviews for National Review. He taught English literature at Dartmouth College from 1963 until his retirement in 1993. He wrote several books including When the Going Was Good!: American Life in the Fifties, Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education, and The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times. He also drafted speeches for Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon when they were presidential candidates. He died from complications of dementia on February 17, 2019 at the age of 88.