Over the course of a book editor’s career, it is not uncommon to be asked to take over a book that had been signed up by another departing editor. When, early in 2009, Adam Bellow left his post as an editor for Doubleday specializing in books of a conservative political bent, I was asked to be the editor of a book he’d signed up, Norman Podhoretz’s work in progress, Why Are Jews Liberals? I was delighted to do so, despite the fact that I am neither Jewish nor remotely conservative in my