Lehrman American Studies Center

Books (Go back)

• J. R. R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth by Bradley J. Birzer
  • 5/5 Stars

  Peter Jackson’s film version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the accompanying proliferation of Rings-related paraphernalia, has once again brought the work of J. R. R. Tolkien to a popular audience. There are, however, few full and accessible…

• Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered by Russell Kirk
  • 5/5 Stars

  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."

• Gleanings from an Unplanned Life: An Annotated Oral History by James L. Buckley
  • 0/5 Stars

  United States senator, under secretary of state, federal appellate judge. James L. Buckley tells the story of his improbable transformation from a highly private businessman/lawyer into his "unplanned life" as probably the only American now alive who has served in…

• Eric Voegelin: The Restoration of Order by Michael P. Federici
  • 0/5 Stars

  Voegelin's philosophical project was to restore order in human souls and human societies in a century of civilizational catastrophe. For Voegelin, the "crisis of the West," reflected in the horrific wars and social chaos of the twentieth century, was the…

• Orestes Brownson: Signs of Contradiction by R.A. Herrera
  • 0/5 Stars

  Orestes Brownson is a new study of a major American intellectual whose work spanned a critical period of American and European history and remains topical (feminism, race, immigration, church and state, national unity, etc.) in our own age. Indeed, the…

• James Burnham and the Struggle for the World: A Life by Daniel Kelly
  • 0/5 Stars

  James Burnham (1905-1987) was one of the most influential anticommunist figures of the Cold War era, as Daniel Kelly's fascinating biography makes clear. But like many anticommunists, Burnham first started on the other side. Beginning his career in 1929 as…

• Ludwig von Mises: The Man and His Economics by Israel M. Kirzner
  • 0/5 Stars

  The work of Ludwig von Mises exercised enormous influence upon the thought of libertarians, classical liberals, anticommunists, and even traditionalist conservatives during the postwar years. But, as Israel Kirzner shows in the second installment in our Library of Modern Thinkers…

• Growing Up Guggenheim: A Personal History of a Family Enterprise by Peter Lawson-Johnston
  • 0/5 Stars

  In Growing Up Guggenheim, Peter Lawson-Johnston-a Guggenheim himself, and the board president who oversaw the transformation of the renowned museum from a local New York institution to a global art venture-shares a personal memoir that includes intimate portraits of the…

• Bertrand de Jouvenel: The Conservative Liberal and the Illusions of Modernity by Daniel J. Mahoney
  • 0/5 Stars

  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…

• A Path Remembered: The Lives of Gerhart & Lucie Niemeyer by Paul Niemeyer
  • 0/5 Stars

  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…

• Unafraid of Virginia Woolf: The Friends and Enemies of Roy Campbell by Joseph Pearce
  • 0/5 Stars

  Roy Campbell (1902–57) led an unquiet life marked by numerous affairs (both real and imagined), brawls (he once attacked Stephen Spender on stage during a poetry recital), and curious stunts (with the help of Dylan Thomas, he once ate a…

• Principles and Heresies: Frank S. Meyer and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement by Kevin J. Smant
  • 0/5 Stars

  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…

• Robert Nisbet: Communitarian Traditionalist by Brad Lowell Stone
  • 0/5 Stars

  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…

• Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography by Gregory Wolfe
  • 0/5 Stars

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), British writer and social critic, was one of the most brilliant controversialists and media personalities of his generation. Gregory Wolfe's acclaimed biography draws on unpublished diaries, correspondence, interviews, and Muggeridge's prolific writings to chronicle the long and…

• Wilhelm Röpke: Swiss Localist, Global Economist by John Zmirak
  • 0/5 Stars

  John Zmirak's introduction to the life and work of Wilhelm Röpke, written with the touch of an accomplished writer and journalist, weaves an analysis of Röpke's economic and social philosophy around the story of the momentous events in which Röpke…