J Peter Scoblic: US vs Them: How a Half Century of Conservatism Has Underminded America's Security (2008, Viking Books)

Scoblic's basic argument is that the disastrous will to empire that the neoconservatives brought to Washington was nothing new: it was standard conservatism, at least going back to the early days of the Cold War. Take William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater for examples, and throw in their interlocutor L. Brent Bozell (Buckley's brother-in-law, the ghost writer of Goldwater's bestseller).