America’s Protestant Roots in History and Theory

by | Jan 31, 2006

Protestantism and the American Founding edited by Michael Zuckert and Thomas Engeman. Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, Indiana) 296 pp., paper, 2004. SINCE OUR FOUNDING, Americans have understood ourselves in powerfully and pervasively religious terms. Intellectuals have...

Sowing the Seeds of Liberty

by | Jan 31, 2006

Educating for Liberty: The First Half-Century of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute by Lee Edwards. Regnery Publishing (Washington, D.C.), viii + 343 pp., $27.95 cloth, 2003. A little over a half-century ago, while Russell Kirk was in the midst of researching and...

Welcome and Farewells

by | Jan 30, 2006

Publisher’s NoteFor the past decade I have been privileged to follow in my esteemed father-in-law’s footprints and edit this unique quarterly book review journal. It has been an enjoyable and rewarding experience. As you, our loyal readers know, the last...

What Conservatism Is For

by | May 3, 2004

A Luncheon Talk at the Philadelphia Society 40th Anniversary Gala in Chicago May 1, 2004 by Annette Kirk We all know that no one can stand in for Stan Evans—so when Bill Campbell asked me to do this, I immediately called Stan and said, “I need a story, a...

A Tribute to Russell Kirk

by | Oct 2, 2003

The death of Russell Kirk is an irreplaceable loss not only to his family and friends but to this review as well. For over thirty-three years he edited this publication, reminding us that education has for its ultimate ends wisdom and virtue. We present this special...

Correcting the Record

by | Mar 27, 2003

In her enjoyable new book, Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got it Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First, Mona Charen quotes the response of the historian Henry Steele Commager to President Reagan’s famous “evil empire” speech in March 1983....

The Splendor of Dedication

by | Oct 9, 2000

At the time of death, the tangibility is felt first in mourning . . . Mourning is real and honest. Indeed we mourn our loss of Russell Kirk. But other threads are woven into the fabric of loss. Our sense of loss should be convertible into equal measures of gratitude...

The Decline of the Liberal Imagination

by | Jul 1, 1997

The two dominant systems of thought in our time are conservatism and liberalism. Of course, there are many variants of the two, but with the demise of Marxism, they remain the principal political movements vying for ascendancy over the minds of men. In the previous...

Permanence and Change

by | Jul 1, 1989

By Russell Kirk From Prospects for Conservatives (Regnery Gateway edition, 1989) The liveliest definition of the word conservative is Ambrose Bierce’s in The Devil’s Dictionary: “Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as...

Returning ‘To the Point’

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Russell Kirk, as every reader of the University Bookman knows well, was a man of letters. Kirk’s books, essays, lectures, reviews, and stories deservedly have received much attention, but he is not known today as a columnist. I thought this was a shame, since surely...