The Rise of the Right [Paperback]

William A. Rusher (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Natl Review; Revised edition (August 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962784125
• ISBN-13: 978-0962784125
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,848,177 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History of the Rise of the Conservative Movement in America, July 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Rise of the Right (Paperback)

This is an amazing history of the Conservative movement in America from it's founding in the early 1950's to the present. William Rusher was the leader of a group of 15 men from around the country who met in a log cabin in the snowy winter in Wisconsin to create a network of conservative leaders who would work together to eventually nominate Barry Goldwater as the Republican nominee for President of the United States in 1964. This book chronicles the humble beginnings of the Conservative movement in the 1950's to the ideological triumph of the election of Ronald Reagan as President. William Rusher was the publisher of National Review for 31 years

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not as comprehensive as I once believed, June 21, 2002

By 

Andrew S. Rogers (Stamford, Connecticut) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Rise of the Right (Hardcover)

William A. Rusher's "Rise of the Right" is a fascinating insider look at the rise to prominence of "the conservative movement" as many Americans understood it in the years from Goldwater to Reagan. The long-time publisher of National Review, Rusher was one of the key forces behind the Draft Goldwater movement in the early '60s, and the Goldwater era occupies about a third of the book. From there, Rusher was also close to the early Reagan campaigns (1968 and '76), and many of the other key moments in the growth of conservatism as generally understood.

As Rusher notes in his Introduction, his emphasis is on "the rise of the right" as a *political* movement -- as opposed to an intellectual/philosophical one. That ground, Rusher notes, was "ably described' in George Nash's 1976 work, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945." As a result, Rusher doesn't spend a lot of time arguing the fine points of conservative doctrine. Instead, he takes us on a backroom tour of political campaign activism. I found this book an exciting read. Any political junkie, regardless of party affiliation, will probably get a kick out of some of the episodes recounted here.

I first read this book around 1987, when I was a devoted Reaganite and a loyal reader of National Review. Rusher opened my eyes to the diversity of the conservative movement -- particularly the three main strands he identifies as the dominant forces in conservatism in the Cold War era: the Big Business types, the anti-communists, and what we would today call the Religious Right. I learned an awful lot reading this.

However, I subsequently learned that Rusher wasn't telling me the whole story after all. The "Right" he describes here, while certainly the most visible subset of conservatism, isn't the whole story. It turns out that conservatism wasn't as discredited or moribund in the pre-Goldwater years as Rusher suggests -- though what we might call the "Buckleyite" wing Rusher belongs to has always tried to claim that it was. Though I would still recommend this book, I would encourage you to read it in context with, for example, Paul Gottfried's The Conservative Movement (Social Movements Past and Present) or Justin Raimondo's Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (Background: Essential Texts for the Conservative Mind). Rusher tells his story well, but it's still only part of the larger picture.