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Political Science
Books (Go back)
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The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
by Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk's best known work was published in 1953. It often is cited as one of the major books that established the post-World War II American conservative movement and critical success launched Russell Kirk into national prominence. In the book…
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American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia
by Jeremy Beer, Bruce Frohnen and Jeffrey O. Nelson
American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia is the first comprehensive reference volume to cover what is surely the most influential political and intellectual movement of the last half century. More than fifteen years in the making-and more than half a million…
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Liberal Democracy and Political Science
by James W. Ceaser
Do political scientists in a liberal democracy bear a special responsibility that goes beyond their academic pursuits? Ceaser, a scholar of American political parties, argues that they do, and he challenges colleagues and students to reexamine what they do as…
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Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered
by Russell Kirk
There is no better guide to this great British statesman than Russell Kirk. This lively and accessible biography is more than a historic overview of an important thinker, it is an unsurpassed introduction to a "politics of prudence."
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Tolerance in the 21st Century: Prospects and Challenges
by Gerson Moreno-Riano
Tolerance in the 21st Century investigates some of the key philosophical and practical dilemmas surrounding the implementation and realization of tolerance in the 21st century.
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The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas
by Carl Becker
When Carl L. Becker's classic study of the text of the Declaration of Independence first appeared in 1922, it marked a great departure from the passionate and patriotic tenor of many existing historical analyses. Becker claims his work was well…
- The Declaration of Independence: a Study in the History of Political Ideas by Carl Becker
- Modern Political Economy and Latin America: Theory and Policy by Jeffry Frieden, Manuel Pastor and Michael Tomz
- Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 by William Gienapp
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Interpreting Tocqueville's Democracy In America
by Ken Masugi
Essays by James Ceaser, Delba Winthrop, Peter Lawler, Ralph Hancock, William Kristol and others.
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New Science of Politics
by Eric Voegelin
This book is Eric Voegelin's best-known work, where he introduced his concepts of cosmological, anthropological, and soteriological symbolizations of truth in contradistinction to Gnosticism. The book traces the development of modernity and its paradoxical condition of an age that advances…
- Science, Politics, and Gnosticism: An Essay on Late Modernity by Eric Voegelin
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Who Owns America?: A New Declaration of Independence
by Herbert Agar and Allen Tate
This volume is the classic sequel to I'll Take My Stand, the famous defense of the South's agrarian traditions. But whereas I'll Take My Stand was theoretical and sectional, Who Owns America? aimed to be concrete and national, and it…
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Shakespeare as Political Thinker
by John E. Alvis and Thomas G. West
The essays contained in this book proceed from the common conviction that Shakespeare's poetry conveys a wisdom about politics commensurate with his artistry. Such well-known thinkers as Allan Bloom, Harry Jaffa, and Robert B. Heilman discuss Shakespeare's understanding of politics…
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Equality by Default: An Essay on Modernity as Confinement
by Philippe Bénéton, translated by Ralph C. Hancock
For most of our contemporaries, to speak of modernity is to think immediately of liberty, equality, and democracy-and to assume that all is well. But things are not so simple. For while the culture of modernity has spread gradually throughout…
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A Century of Horrors: Communism, Nazism, and the Uniqueness of the Shoah
by Alain Besançon, translated by Ralph C. Hancock and Nathaniel H. Hancock
The twentieth century bears the indelible imprint of both communism and Nazism. Today, it sometimes seems as if the former is all but forgotten, at least among Western elites, while our cultural memory of the latter is an inextinguishable fire.…
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Critics of the Enlightenment: Readings in the French Counter-Revolutionary Tradition
by Christopher Olaf Blum, translated by Philippe Bénéton
For the Anglo-American world, Edmund Burke is the touchstone of counter-revolutionary thought, but in this volume, Christopher Olaf Blum shows that in attempting to vindicate the principles that had, at its best, animated the Old Regime, and in critiquing the…
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Orestes A. Brownson: Works in Political Philosophy, vol. 2: 1828-1841
by Orestes A. Brownson
The essays selected for this volume represent the earliest phase of the American critic Orestes Brownson's literary career. They span over a decade of work, from the early philosophical and theological reflections of the late 1820s, through the Transcendentalist phase…
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Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative/Libertarian Debate
by George Carey
Ideas about the nature of liberty and a normative moral tradition lie at the heart of many contemporary political controversies. Because they are concerned with core principles, these debates can be vigorous and highly charged. Nowhere has this been more…
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George Kennan: A Writing Life
by Lee Congdon
There were two George F. Kennans. The first was the well-known diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia-a tough political realist and man of the world who gained fame as the theorist of America's Cold War "containment" strategy.…
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The Enduring Edmund Burke: Bicentennial Essays
by Ian Crowe
This collection of essays commemorates the 200th anniversary of Burke's death by exploring his insights into political philosophy and human nature.
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Roots of Freedom: A Primer on Modern Liberty
by John W. Danford
Roots of Freedom is a primer on the thinkers and ideas that, over many centuries, have laid the foundations of free societies. Concepts such as the rule of law, independent judiciary, limited government, free markets, and individual autonomy are traced…
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Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World
by Chantal Delsol
It would be difficult to find a more perceptive description of Western man and the world he now inhabits than that provided by Chantal Delsol in Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World. With style and lucidity…
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The Soul and Barbed Wire: An Introduction to Solzhenitsyn
by Edward E. Ericson and Alexis Klimoff
Authored by two eminent Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn scholars, The Soul and Barbed Wire is the first and only book to offer both a detailed biography and a comprehensive appraisal of the literary achievement of the Nobel prize-winning author who became…
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Defending the Republic: Constitutional Morality in a Time of Crisis; Essays in Honor of George W. Carey
by Bruce Frohnen and Kenneth L. Grasso
From the earliest church covenants and compacts of the Puritans to the present day, Americans have seen their Constitution as a fundamental bulwark of liberty and limited government. This collection of essays, intended to honor and further understanding of the…
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The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis
by Robert P. George
It is a common supposition among many of our cultural elites that a constitutional "wall of separation" between church and state precludes religious believers from bringing their beliefs to bear on public matters. This is because secular liberals typically assume…
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Moral Enterprise: Politics, Reason, and the Human Good
by Kenneth L. Grasso and Robert P. Hunt
Francis P. Canavan has been described by Gerard V. Bradley as "one of the great political theorists of the past thirty years," and Robert P. George has hailed him as our "most incisive and trenchant critic" of liberal judicial activism.…
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Securing Democracy: Why We Have an Electoral College
by Gary L Gregg
The United States Constitution and its Framers are rightly lauded for the way in which the democratic order they created successfully balances the competing demands of order and freedom, justice and individual rights, unity and diversity. But the peculiar mechanism…
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Vital Remnants: America's Founding and Western Tradition
by Gary L Gregg
This original collection is at once a work of impressive scholarship and a clarion call to those concerned about the future of the Republic. Vital Remnants revisits for a new generation the sources of America's greatness and suggests means to…
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Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics (CW 6)
by Eric Voegelin
Volume 6 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin offers the first translation of the full German text of Anamnesis published in 1966. The previous English edition, translated by Gerhart Niemeyer, focused largely on the sections of Anamnesis dealing directly…
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From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States
by Paul Hollander
As a global phenomenon, the scale and character of communism is only now coming into focus. The opening of formerly inaccessible archives and landmark books such as The Black Book of Communism have helped to establish empirically the extent and…
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The Way of Life: John Paul II and the Challenge of Liberal Modernity
by Carson Holloway
The passing of John Paul II provoked questions about the Pope, particularly in his relation to modernity. Was he opposed to the tenets of modernity, as some critics claimed? Or did he accommodate modernity in a way no Pope…
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Essays in Theology of Culture
by Robert W. Jenson
Gilbert Meilaender says: "Here is evidence that serious theology is neither an esoteric nor a purely private undertaking. In learned, provocative, and innovative theological explorations of politics, education, and the arts, Robert Jenson discusses and exemplifies the calling of Christians…
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The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Unquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command
by James Kalb
When it comes to liberalism, the usual story in postwar America is one of decline, accompanied by the subplot of conservatism's ascendance. But take a longer view-look beyond and below politics-and it is the unchallenged triumph of liberalism and…
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Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists
by Bill Kauffman
In Look Homeward, America, Bill Kauffman introduces us to the reactionary radicals, front-porch anarchists, and traditionalist rebels who give American culture and politics its pith, vim, and life. Blending history, memoir, digressive literariness, and polemic, Kauffman provides fresh portaiture of…
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The Conservative Affirmation in America
by Willmoore Kendall
More than twenty years ago a maverick political scientist named Willmoore Kendall predicted the triumph of conservatism. Upon the 1963 publication of Kendall's The Conservative Affirmation, his former Yale student William F. Buckley Jr. called him "one of the most…
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Aliens in America: The Strange Truth about Our Souls
by Peter Augustine Lawler
Beginning with a consideration of David Brooks's popular and influential characterization of modern Americans as "bourgeois bohemians," Lawler paints a picture that is not altogether hopeful. If Brooks and other contemporary social commentators are correct, our elites care about little…
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The Myth of Democracy
by Tage Lindbom
Western intellectuals and politicians are writing and speaking about the triumphs and salvific powers of democracy. But according to Swedish historian and philosopher Tage Lindbom, there is a widening gap between democratic rhetoric and concrete reality. In this provocative and…
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Dickens and the Social Order
by Myron Magnet
In this groundbreaking study, which focuses on Dickens's early novels Nicholas Nickleby and Barnaby Rudge, City Journal editor Myron Magnet argues that the liberal reformism for which Dickens is so well known rested on a surprisingly traditional view of society.…
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Bertrand de Jouvenel: The Conservative Liberal and the Illusions of Modernity
by Daniel J. Mahoney
In his effort to detach the indispensable notion of the common good from its historical identification with the more closed, homogeneous, and static societies of the premodern past, the French political philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903–87) pointed the way…
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An Uncertain Legacy: Essays on the Pursuit of Liberty
by Edward B. McLean
An Uncertain Legacy brings together today's leading scholars who have devoted their lives to the study of liberty. In charting the intellectual pilgrimage of an idea, these authors transport us from liberty's Roman exemplars and medieval philosophers to its treatment…
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The Inner Vision: Liberty and Literature
by Edward B. McLean
The concepts of liberty and responsibility have been dealt with extensively from the perspectives of economics, political theory, philosophy, and religion. But a special kind of insight into man's exercise of liberty and acceptance of responsibility is possible through the…
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Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology
by Kenneth Minogue
The term "ideology" can cover almost any set of ideas, but its power to bewitch political activists results from its strange logic. It is part philosophy, part science, and part spiritual revelation, all tied together in leading to a…
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Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing
by Mark T. Mitchell
The polymath Michael Polanyi first made his mark as a physical chemist, but his interests gradually shifted to economics, politics, and philosophy, in which field he would ultimately propose a revolutionary theory of knowledge that grew out of his firsthand…
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A Path Remembered: The Lives of Gerhart & Lucie Niemeyer
by Paul Niemeyer
Gerhart Niemeyer, who taught government at the University of Notre Dame for several decades, was one of the foremost conservative political theorists of the twentieth century. He was the author of seminal books and articles exploring the nature of Communist…
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In Defense of Religious Liberty
by David Novak
In Defense of Religious Liberty contains David Novak's vigorous-and paradoxical-argument that the primacy of divine law is the best foundation for a secular, multicultural democracy. Novak presents his claim, which will astound both liberal and conservative advocates of democracy…
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The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays
by George A. Panichas
As the author of The Conservative Mind and other seminal books, Russell Kirk is usually thought of as one of the American conservative political movement's most important progenitors. But as this collection demonstrates, Kirk was perhaps at his best as…
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The Critical Legacy of Irving Babbitt
by George A. Panichas
The Critical Legacy of Irving Babbitt is an unsurpassed appreciation of a major American critic and diagnostician of the modern social order. Panichas reveals Babbitt's criticism to be uncompromising and controversial, impelled by moral concerns and imperatives-the ultimate problems of…
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A Brief History of Political Thought and Statecraft
by Henry Paolucci
A Brief History of Political Thought and Statecraft is a richly-documented yet fast-moving account of the political changes that took place from the time of the Greeks to twentieth century dictatorships and democratic institutions.
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Henry Paolucci: Selected Writings on Literature and the Arts; Science and Astronomy; Law, Government, and Political Philosophy
by Henry Paolucci
During his lifetime, Henry Paolucci taught and wrote in several academic disciplines. The variety of subject presented in this volume bears testimony to Professor Paolucci's wide range of interests and provides an impressive sampling of Professor Paolucci's comprehensive approach to…
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Small Is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered
by Joseph Pearce
A third of a century ago, E. F. Schumacher rang out a timely warning against the idolatry of giantism with his book Small Is Beautiful. Since then, millions of copies of Schumacher's work have been sold in dozens of different…
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Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement
by Justin Raimondo
In recent years a number of conservatives have wondered where the Right went wrong. One persuasive answer is provided by Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement. Justin Raimondo's captivating narrative is the story of…
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The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud
by Philip Rieff
Since its publication in 1966, The Triumph of the Therapeutic has been hailed as a work of genuine brilliance, one of those books whose insights uncannily anticipate cultural developments and whose richness of argumentation reorients entire fields of inquiry. This…
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Liberalism and Its Critics
by Michael Sandel
Much contemporary political philosophy has been a debate between utilitarianism on the one hand and Kantian, or rights-based ethic has recently faced a growing challenge from a different direction, from a view that argues for a deeper understanding of citizenship…
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Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor
by Ellis Sandoz
Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of the great literary figures. He has often been regarded as a prophet foretelling the rise of totalitarian socialism in Russia. But his political vision had deep spiritual roots. His recognition that atheistic materialism had gripped…
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The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat
by Roger Scruton
Scruton shows how the different religious and philosophical roots of Western and Islamic societies have resulted in those societies' profoundly divergent beliefs about the nature of political order. For one thing, the idea of the social contract, crucial to the…
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Principles and Heresies: Frank S. Meyer and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement
by Kevin J. Smant
As the subtitle to Kevin Smant's biography indicates, the shape of the postwar American conservative movement was decisively influenced by Frank Meyer (1909-1973). One of the most passionate and committed of the Cold War's communists-turned-conservatives, Meyer's untiring efforts to locate…
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Steps Toward Restoration: The Consequences of Richard Weaver's Ideas
by Ted J. Smith
An appreciation of the modern philosopher and University of Chicago English professor, Richard M. Weaver, and an analysis of the continuing relevance of his best known work, Ideas Have Consequences. This 50th Anniversary essay collection is edited by Weaver's authorized…
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The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
This reader, compiled by renowned Solzhenitsyn scholars Edward E. Ericson, Jr., and Daniel J. Mahoney in collaboration with the Solzhenitsyn family, provides in one volume a rich and representative selection of Solzhenitsyn's voluminous works. Reproduced in their entirety are early…
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Robert Nisbet: Communitarian Traditionalist
by Brad Lowell Stone
This is the only book-length intellectual treatment of sociologist Robert Nisbet (1913-1996), and it is written by one of the country's leading authorities on his life and work, Brad Lowell Stone. In this work, the debut volume of the new…
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Equality, Decadence, and Modernity: The Collected Essays of Stephen J. Tonsor
by Stephen Tonsor
Over the course of the past four decades Stephen J. Tonsor, professor emeritus of European intellectual history at the University of Michigan, has made a reputation within the conservative intellectual movement as a trenchant thinker, forceful writer, and witty-sometimes…
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Political Symbols in Russian History: Church, State, and the Quest for Order and Justice.
by Lee Trepanier
From Amazon: Political Symbols in Russian History is one of the few works that presents an analytical and comprehensive account of Russian history and politics between the years of 988 to 2005. From Kievan Rus to Putin's Russia, this book…
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Science, Politics and Gnosticism: An Essay on Late Modernity
by Eric Voegelin
First published in 1968, Science, Politics and Gnosticism comprises two essays by Eric Voegelin (1901–85), arguably one of the most provocative and influential political philosophers of the last century. In these essays, Voegelin contends that certain modern movements, including positivism…
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Living Constitution, Dying Faith: Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence
by Bradley C. S. Watson
In Living Constitution, Dying Faith, political scientist and legal historian Bradley Watson examines how the contemporary embrace of the "living" Constitution has arisen from the radical transformation of American political thought. This transformation, brought about in the late nineteenth century…
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Civic Education and Culture
by Bradley C. S. Watson
What do we teach our citizens? This great Platonic question is as crucial today as it has ever been. America and the West come to terms with this question in the context of their richly diverse, technologically sophisticated, fundamentally individualistic…
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Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time
by Richard M. Weaver
This classic work by the author of Ideas Have Consequences boldly examines the intellectual roots of our current cultural crisis.
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A Path of Our Own: An Andean Village and Tomorrow's Economy of Values
by Adam K. Webb
A Path of Our Own tells the story of Pomatambo, a village in one of the poorest parts of Peru's highlands. Adam Webb brings to life the experiences of three generations of these humble peasants as they have been…
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Darwin Day In America: How Our Politics and Culture have been Dehumanized in the Name of Science
by John G. West
At the dawn of the last century, leading scientists and politicians giddily predicted that science-especially Darwinian biology-would supply solutions to all the intractable problems of American society, from crime to poverty to sexual maladjustment. Instead, politics and culture were dehumanized…
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God, Man, and Hollywood: Politically Incorrect Cinema from The Birth of a Nation to The Passion of the Christ
by Mark Royden Winchell
It takes no great powers of observation to see that Hollywood has long been far to the left of the general American public. Even in stories that have no overt political content, the social and moral assumptions in films rated…