I begin by congratulating the Storeys on their splendid achievement. They have managed to write an eminently readable account of a “conversation” among four complex French thinkers. As a reader learns from the footnotes, their presentation of the unfolding argument is based on an enormous amount of scholarly research, but they never let the scholarship interfere with the smooth flow of their prose.

John P. McCormick has become the leading proponent of a new democratic—or, now, “populist”—reading of Machiavelli. The authors of all three of the other books reviewed here cite McCormick as a source and inspiration; and he has written positive blurbs for their books. In Machiavellian Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2011) McCormick argued that Machiavelli's praise of Roman “offices or assemblies that exclude the wealthiest citizens from eligibility; magistrate appointment procedures that combine lottery and election; and political trials in which the entire citizenry acts as ultimate judge over prosecutions and appeals” constitutes “a robust, extra-electoral model of elite accountability and popular empowerment” very different from, and much superior to, the aristocratic “republicanism” attributed to Machiavelli by the “Cambridge school.” In Reading Machiavelli: Scandalous Books, Suspect Engagements, and the Virtue of Populist Politics, McCormick extends his previous analysis by offering “original readings of crucial themes within … The Prince, the Discourses, and the Florentine Histories” (1–2). He also expands his critique of competing interpretations of Machiavelli and Rome by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Strauss, John Pocock, and Quentin Skinner.

John Evans announces the question to which all three of these books respond in his title: What is a human? And in the subtitle, he indicates the reason many people today are concerned about the answers offered to that question: what the different answers mean for human rights. As the debates about the fate of a fetus or comatose patient show, definitions of what is human can determine who lives or dies.

The demonstrated willingness of ten knowledgeable scholars to read and comment on parts of my work is, indeed, a great honor. As Mary Keys's introductory remarks show, the contributors are friends. However, although their comments are generally appreciative, they are by no means uncritical. I thus welcome the opportunity to respond to them.

The four books reviewed here illustrate the pervasive influence of Leo Strauss on contemporary studies of Plato. However, although the authors all acknowledge their debt to Strauss, they produce remarkably different views of Plato. Reading these books in conjunction with one another cannot help but make one wonder whether there is any longer, if there ever was, a “Straussian” sect or school.