Russell Kirk's Concise Guide to Conservatism

The modern conservative intellectual movement began in 1953 with Russell Kirk’s groundbreaking book The Conservative Mind. Four years later, he published a pithy, wry, philosophical summary of what conservatism really means. Originally titled The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Conservatism, this little book was essentially a popular version of The Conservative Mind.

Now, a century after its author’s birth, this neglected gem has been recovered. It remains what Kirk intended it to be: an accessible introduction to conservative ideas, especially for the young. With a new title and an introduction by the eminent intellectual historian Wilfred M. McClay, Russell Kirk’s Concise Guide to Conservatism arrives with uncanny timing. The movement that Kirk defined in 1953 is today so contested and fragmented that no one seems able to say with confidence what conservatism means.

This book, as fresh and prophetic as the day it was published sixty years ago, is a reminder that no one can match Russell Kirk in engaging people’s minds and imaginations—an indispensable task in reviving our civilization.

Russell Kirk (1918-1994), the father of intellectual conservatism in America, was the author of more than thirty books, including The Conservative Mind, Eliot and His Age, and The Roots of American Order. His legacy lives on in the work of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, based at his ancestral home in Mecosta, Michigan.

Wilfred M. McClay is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. His book Land of Hope, a one-volume history of America, has drawn widespread acclaim; the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger calls it "the most balanced, nuanced history of the United States I have read in the past fifty years." McClay is also the author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, which the Organization of American Historians honored as that year’s best book in American intellectual history.