The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (Hardcover)

~ Patrick Allitt PhD (Author)
Key Phrases: nullification crisis, southern conservatism, northern conservatives, United States, National Review, World War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Author and professor Allit (I'm the Teacher, You're the Student, Religion in Americ Since 1945)probes the origins of American conservatism from a time when "conservative" was a descriptor, not a movement. Taking an even-handed approach, Allitt acknowledges the conservative tendency toward self-interest (pessimism and complacency being "characteristic vices"), but finds that, at its best, the conservative message illuminates "hidden or neglected insights about the human existence" (i.e, the realities of inequality and free-market justice). From present-day questions of taxation and big government, Allitt traces conservative principles to the earliest days of the republic. (The history of their specious abandonment is almost as old; Thomas Jefferson railed against Hamilton's big-government "loose construction of the Constitution," before coming to power and using the same principle to justify the Louisiana Purchase.) Allitt charts the schism between Northern and Southern conservatives before, during and after the Civil War, bringing to light those forgotten abolitionists who also supported secession. Allitt also investigates the isolationists who, after WWII, became the leading cold warriors, and other latter-20th century issues like Civil Rights, desegregation and affirmative action. Cutting across the stereotypes of present-day conservatism, this nuanced, thoughtful history should educate the unaffiliated and help the disillusioned recover.
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* No sooner does Paul Gottfried (in Encounters, 2009) lament the absence of a thorough historical overview of American conservatism, than here it is, by an author Gottfried approbates for the narrower survey Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950–1985 (1993). What’s more, the book is every bit as fundamental for mavens of conservatism as Gottfried’s primer on the post–World War II American Right, The Conservative Movement (rev., 1993). Perhaps its most important major theme is that conservatism has meant different things at different times and sometimes at the same time, so that Northerners as well as Southerners said that theirs was the conservative cause during the Civil War, and voices against as well as for later American wars have asserted their conservatism. Underlying both sides of such differences as well as more widespread concurrences are the arguably most common conservative attitudes: distrust of theory (ideology) and the disposition to respond to social and political challenges called reaction. Which haven’t kept some, notably contemporary neoconservatives, from ideologizing and preempting. Paradoxical is one of the most common adjectives in the book. Allitt’s deliberately disinterested purview encompasses public thinkers from the ratification of the Constitution to the end of the twentieth century, and both readers who expect to learn something and those who consider themselves well-versed about conservatism stand to be thrilled to meet figures and ideas new to them. --Ray Olson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300118945
• ISBN-13: 978-0300118940
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #41,101 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Historical Perspective of American Conservatives, June 3, 2009

By	C. Tang (Stillwater, OK USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Patrick Allitt had essentially given a scholastic survey of historical figures he considered to be conservatives throughout the American history. Starting from the Founders of the American republic to the present day modern conservatives, Allitt tells their ideologies, personalities and what make them to be American conservatives in a lively manner. I recommend this book to any general reader who has interest in the history of American conservatism. In this book, I find it fascinating how the clashes of ideas within American conservatism played out in history. Overall, this is a very good book that gives the historical perspective of American conservatives.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Timeless History, June 26, 2009

By	Daria Snadowsky "young adult author" (Nevada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The worst thing about no longer being a student at Emory University is not being able to take Dr. Allitt's history classes anymore. Luckily, he keeps writing incredible books with universal appeal that even non-historians like me can enjoy. And with his latest opus, THE CONSERVATIVES, Dr. Allitt raises the bar even higher. No wonder Booklist awarded it a starred review.

With his signature wit and insight, Dr. Allitt has created an endlessly fascinating, remarkably thorough, and completely unbiased history of notable conservative figures and movements in the U.S. During a time when merely the word "conservative" can have polarizing effects, Dr. Allitt tackles this normally controversial subject with no agenda other than to provide a gripping, well-researched overview of an ideology that has figured largely in this country's past, from our Founding Fathers right up through 9/11.

Best of all, THE CONSERVATIVES escapes the fate of far-too-many scholarly works which overwhelm with names, dates and boring facts. Dr. Allitt's book is so deftly-paced and structured that it reads more like a non-fiction "great American novel" than an exemplary and definitive historical treatise, which it is.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You can't get much more fair-minded than this, September 22, 2009

By	Christopher Barat (Owings Mills, MD, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you're interested in reading a history of American conservatism that comes neither to panegyrize nor pathologize, then this may be the book for you. Allitt's fair, dispassionate account of various strains of conservative thought throughout American intellectual history keeps on the high road throughout, touching upon present-day debates when necessary but focusing on ideas first and foremost. Allitt identifies the following as characteristic of American conservatism:

1. an attitude to social and political change that looks for support to the ideas, beliefs, and habits of the past and puts more faith in the lessons of history than in the abstractions of political philosophy;
2. a suspicion of democracy and equality, more specifically, the confusion between the notion of men as being legally and politically equal and being equal when it comes to virtues, abilities and talents;
3. the view that civilization is fragile and easily disrupted and we need virtuous citizens to keep our civilization whole;
4. the desire for a highly educated elite as guardians of civilization.

That's as elegant a summary of basic conservative ideas as I've ever read. Of course, being in academia, I know that we've got a "highly educated elite" in place; the problem is that too many of them are on the other side.

Liberals are especially encouraged to read this book. The first step to good debate is knowing and respecting where your opponent gets his ideas from.