Something new was on the menu at Commentary magazine’s annual dinner on Monday night, which is always one of the warmest and happiest in town. The neoconservative firmament came out to hear the first annual Norman Podhoretz lecture, and, over salmon and sorbet, to celebrate a decade of Neal Kozodoy’s editorship of the magazine.

The crowd included National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. and his wife Pat; editor of City Journal Myron Magnet; Commentary magazine’s Editor at Large Norman Podhoretz; the Cold War heroine Midge Decter; Gordon Crovitz of Dow Jones; president of Manhattan Institute Larry Mone; a former editor of Public Interest and a consulting editor for Commentary, Adam Wolfson; senior editor at City Journal and author of the recent book “South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias” (Regnery), Brian Anderson; chairman of the Commentary publication committee, Michael Schwartz; Commentary’s music critic, Terry Teachout; and Fred Siegel, author of “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life” (Encounter Books).

From the White House was the writer of some of President Bush’s most celebrated speeches, including the Second Inaugural, Michael Gerson; and the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives, Peter Wehner.

Opinion makers from both online and print were in attendance, including – to name but a few – former New York Times executive editor, A.M. Rosenthal; columnist Max Boot; and Wall Street Journal books editor Erich Eichman. The contingent of bloggers in the room included John McIntyre and Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics.com; Paul Mirengoff of Powerline; Kathryn Lopez of National Review Online; and James Taranto of Opinionjournal.com.

Others in the room included Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch; Leonard Garment, who is heading the effort for a jazz museum in New York; Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; and Ruth Wisse of Harvard.

The first Podhoretz laureate, Charles Krauthammer, was introduced by Yale professor David Gelernter. His theme was neoconservatism as a governing philosophy. In the pages of the National Interest, Dr. Krauthammer and Francis Fukuyama have had an ongoing disagreement about foreign policy. Mr. Fukuyama, famous as the author of last decade’s “The End of History,” has criticized Dr. Krauthammer’s positive assessment of America’s ability to exert a democratizing influence over other countries as “strangely disconnected from reality.”

A highlight of Dr. Krauthammer’s remarks was when he said Mr. Fukuyama had been silent in the long run-up to the Iraq war and only afterward had publicly announced his private nonsupport by claiming it was clear all along that the Bush project would be a failure. Gales of laughter rocked the gilt frames on the walls of the private Mid-town club when Dr. Krauthammer, who speaks with a marvelous deadpan, added that, after the successful Iraqi elections this January, Mr. Fukuyama’s disparagement of the democratic project might be described as a failure of “retroactive prophecy” – no mean feat, but “I suppose the sort of thing one can do at the end of history.”

One of the memorable moments of the evening came when a member of Commentary’s publication committee, Roger Hertog (also chairman of The New York Sun), rose to offer something that wasn’t on the program. But no sooner had Mr. Hertog announced that he was going to offer a toast to Mr. Kozodoy on the occasion of his first 10 years as editor, than the dinner guests had leapt to their feet in a standing ovation of cheers and whoops and bravos. They were individuals who had – sometimes for decades – either paid for, written for, worked for, or read the magazine. When the pandemonium subsided and Mr. Hertog got a chance to make his toast, he concluded by saying, “At the risk of heresy, if someone were to ask what defines the magazine we honor this evening, the answer is simple: Neal Kozodoy. All the rest, pardon the pun, is mere commentary.”

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“I do feel incredibly lucky to have published this tiny little book,” said author George Courtauld at the British Consulate on Monday at an evening celebrating the publication of the American edition of “The Pocket Book of British Patriotism” (Sterling Publishing), essentially a brief timeline of British history.

Mr. Courtauld, who commutes to work in London, told how, a year and a half ago on Christmas Eve, he was aboard a train when a group of young boys boarded and sang Christmas carols. An older woman offered her seat to one boy whose arm was in a sling, saying she thought the “little Lord Nelson” might like to join his seated friends. The boy said “thanks” but did not understand her reference to the admiral, who was hero of the Battle of Trafalgar. Instead, the boy thought “Nelson” was a reference to a character from “Star Trek.”

“I was profoundly depressed,” Mr. Courtauld said. He said he related this incident to his family when he got home, but proceeded to recognize gaps in his own knowledge when one of his three sons asked him when the Cross of St. George had become the country’s flag. Over that Christmas holiday, Mr. Courtauld was inspired to compile an “enormous history chart for our bathroom wall” for himself and his children. To his amazement, word spread about the chart, and numerous people wanted a copy of it.

He met with seven major publishing companies, but was told: “No one will buy it. Patriotism is an obsolete concept. We’re all citizens of the world.”

So he self-published the book, which combines the seriousness of E.D. Hirsch’s “Dictionary of Cultural Literacy” with the brevity of Trivial Pursuit game cards. He limited the book to 64 pages, he said, estimating he would break even at selling 3,000. An astounding 10,000 copies sold in three to five days, and more than 140,000 sold in about a month, many becoming stocking stuffers last holiday season.

“I’m not a historian,” Mr. Courtauld told the crowd, though he said he had been on programs with historians who appeared “incredibly resentful,” since his book of “obvious material” sold briskly while their work on subjects such as “sword hilts in Arthurian Cornwall” sold few copies.

The evening’s hosts were British Consul Patrick Owens and the president of St. George’s Society Natalie Thomas Pray. Michael Fragnito of Barnes & Noble Publishing told the Sun of helping to arrange the book’s American publication. “As a typical publisher, I fell in love with its sales figures” in England, he said.

A sequel is forthcoming. Mr. Courtauld is working with Jonathan Foreman, son of blacklisted screenwriter Carl Foreman (“High Noon”), in compiling “The Pocket Book of Patriotism,” telling America’s story.