So this is Michael Walzer’s idea of retiring, as written up The New Republic:

There is no drama surrounding Walzer’s retirement. He was not purged or anything like that (remember, Dissent is anti-Stalinist!). “I just can’t keep up anymore,” he said. Walzer’s co-editor, Michael Kazin, will run the magazine, which in addition to its print iteration has an increasingly robust online presence. Walzer, a professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey (and a New Republic contributing editor), will continue to contribute to Dissent as well as write a book on national liberation movements, a subject on which he is currently lecturing at Yale. Plus, volumes three and four of The Jewish Political Tradition aren’t just going to co-edit themselves.

Wow. Just wow. I have to admit I was crabby when I first saw his initial foray into Jewish thought, as I thought I was going to miss him in the realm of (okImagoingsayit) “pure” normative political theory, but…he’s so good at both, and his philosophical perspective was so deeply informed by the Jewish tradition anyway that he was right; there was no way to understand the one without the other.

The New Republic writer highlights his book on the notion of a Just War, and it’s a very good book, indeed. But the real deal–Walzer at his unparalleled best– is Spheres of Justice. Drop what you are doing and read it.