Russell Kirk

What holds America together? In this classic work, Russell Kirk identifies the beliefs and institutions that have nurtured the American soul and commonwealth. Beginning with the Hebrew prophets, Kirk examines in dramatic fashion the sources of American order. His analytical narrative might be called a "tale of five cities": Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and Philadelphia. For an understanding of the significance of America in the twenty-first century,...

In this, the liveliest and most accessible one-volume life of Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk ingeniously combines into a living whole the private and the public Burke. He gives us a fresh assessment of the great statesman, who enjoys even greater influence today than in his own time. Russell Kirk was a leading figure in the post-World War II revival of American interest in Edmund Burke. Today, no one who takes seriously the problems of society dares...

“The American Cause” explains in simple yet eloquent language the bedrock principles upon which America's experiment in constitutional self-government is built. Russell Kirk, whose life and thought has recently been featured in C-SPAN's acclaimed American Writers series-intended this little book to be an assertion of the moral and social principles upholding our nation. Kirk's primer is an aid to reflection on those principles-political, economic,...

Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind is one of the greatest contributions to twentieth-century American conservatism. Brilliant in every respect, from its conception to its choice of significant figures representing the history of intellectual conservatism, The Conservative Mind launched the modern American Conservative Movement when it was first published in 1953 and has become an enduring classic of political thought.-Print ed.

Throughout his career, whether as a man of letters, professor, soldier, journalist, novelist, or world traveler, Russell Kirk found himself in the thick of the intellectual controversies of his age. In “The Politics of Prudence”, his twenty-ninth book (and the last to be published during his lifetime), Kirk endeavors to defend a truly conservative "prudential politics," as opposed to the "ideological politics" now often advanced by self-identified...

In a series of eleven essays, Kirk relates several issues to a common question: "Is the American Republic descending into decadence, or are the American people entering upon a renewal of belief and hope?" In doing so, he covers a wide range of subjects that beg answers and action, including "The American Mission," "The Illusion of Human Rights," "Prospects for American Education," and "Can Virtue be Taught?" Kirk's views are trenchant, well supported,...

"Twenty-two years to the day, a videotape of an unsolved 1989 murder arrives at the San Francisco Homicide Detail. So begins homicide inspector Ben Raveneau's toughest cold case. The victim, Alan Krueger, a former Secret Service agent, carried in his coat sixty-one $100 bills. In 1989, the Secret Service inspected the bills and called them legitimate. They take another look now and say, counterfeit. But there's more. There's a link to the present...