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The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 Paperback – October 31, 2006

by George H. Nash (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 86 ratings
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First published in 1976, George H. Nash’s celebrated history of the postwar conservative intellectual movement has become the unquestioned standard in the field. This new edition, published in commemoration of the book's thirtieth anniversary, includes a new preface and conclusion by the author and will continue to instruct anyone interested in how today’s conservative movement was born.
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  1. Print length
    660 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    ISI Books
  4. Publication date
    October 31, 2006
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1933859121
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1933859125
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

George H. Nash graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College and received his doctorate in history from Harvard University. He writes and lectures frequently about American conservatism. He is also the author of a three-volume life of Herbert Hoover.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ ISI Books; 30th anniversary edition (October 31, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 660 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1933859121
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1933859125
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 86 ratings

About the author

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George H. Nash

George H. Nash

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A historian, lecturer, and authority on the life of Herbert Hoover, George H. Nash has written and published the first three volumes of a definitive, scholarly biography of Hoover and the monograph Herbert Hoover and Stanford University. He has edited the monumental memoir Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath and its companion volume The Crusade Years, 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover's Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and Its Aftermath.

Nash is also author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 and Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism. A graduate of Amherst College and holder of a PhD in history from Harvard University, he received the Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters in 2008.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
86 global ratings

Customers say

Customers say the book does a wonderful job explaining the thought of Mises, Rothbard, and others. They also find the writing style very well written.

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7 customers mention "Content"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the book's content wonderful, thorough, and thought-provoking. They also say it has a profound influence on them and affects how they see current events.

"...The book also does a good job of defining the tenets of Conservativism even as it claims that there are no canonized beliefs...." Read more

"...Very well written and well documented. Nash does a wonderful job of explaining the thought of Mises, Rothbard, et al and brings these thinkers to..." Read more

"...Moreover Nash includes decent commentary on important political philosophers like Leo Strauss..." Read more

"...This book is very well written with particularly good combinations of relevant quotations from primary sources and the author's descriptions...." Read more

3 customers mention "Writing style"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing style of the book very well written, with good combinations.

"...It's also more readable and less pretentious...." Read more

"...Very well written and well documented...." Read more

"...This book is very well written with particularly good combinations of relevant quotations from primary sources and the author's descriptions...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

Dave (D.J.) Butler
5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough and Thought-Provoking
Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2002
Verified Purchase
As someone who has come to conservatism at the end of the twentieth century, this book opened to me my own political prehistory, the thinking underlying conservative ideas. To some extent, it forced me to decide what kind of conservative I am.
The book is not strictly chronological in its discussion. Nash begins with one chapter apiece on each of the three principal strands of American conservatism post World War II: libertarianism, traditionalism, and anti-communism. Each strand is discussed chronologically and in terms of its principal proponents, leading works, publications, organizations, roots and, of course, theory.
Subsequent chapters discuss the efforts of these three groups to cooperate and to consolidate, the efforts to find specifically American roots for conservative ideas, and the growth of the conservative movement in the thirty years or so following 1945. An Epilogue written for the 1996 edition discusses subsequent changes in American conservatism, including neoconservatism and the religious right.
The title correctly identifies the subject matter of the book -- it is a history of an intellectual movement, and only secondarily a political history. Certain watershed events in contemporary conservatism (the McCarthy investigations, the election campaign of Barry Goldwater, and similar) are touched upon, but principally as phenomena to which conservatives react or by which they are shaped.
Highly recommended.
62 people found this helpful
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FalconEagle
5.0 out of 5 stars "Real" Conservatives
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2016
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For all the hype of conservative media and conservatives, in general, during this current 2016 election cycle, how many citizens really understand who the real conservatives are? As a military academy grad and Vietnam era veteran, my understanding is much like Nash's. Nash defines several kinds of conservatives from an intellectual viewpoint and you will be surprised at what you will learn even if some of the material is dated. Channeling Nash and my own experiences, “real” conservatives certainly aren't the current Neocons and their "perpetual war for perpetual peace" stratagems that they foist upon a mostly clueless electorate. It isn't the likes of William F. Buckley. It isn't current Republican Senators and 2016 primary candidates who would cancel "advice and consent," A2§2, of the Constitution and vote for the Corker-Cardin bill that made the current president's Iran Treaty a fait accompli. It is not those who apparently do not understand that the Trade Act of 1974 is unconstitutional and fast-tracking trade agreements (really treaties) is also unconstitutional. Prior U.S. Supreme Court decisions through the 1950s, would have made unconstitutional any of the five Fast-Tracked international trade agreements that have been passed using the Fast-Track law, under the Trade Act of 1974. The Trade Act of 1974 is a mere law that supposedly has changed the Constitution without amending it by asserting that when the Founders said “treaty” they were not referring to any and all forms of international agreement, which in their time they clearly were referring to. These trade agreements have gutted the United States economy. The SCOTUS justices understand all this but choose to ignore it. No "real" conservative would ever commit these types of acts as a sitting Congressional legislator or jurist! Read Nash’s thorough account and you will begin to understand how much we have been mislead by the media and standard K-12 / undergraduate education in history, government, and political science.
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David Swan
4.0 out of 5 stars Better than Russell Kirk but still dreary
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2006
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After reading `The Conservative Mind' I could scarcely imagine why ANYONE but a small group of goose stepping Neanderthals would be drawn to Conservativism. Although nearly equal in length, George H. Nash's history of Conservativism is considerably more palatable than Russell Kirk's dreary ode. It's also more readable and less pretentious. Mr. Nash presents a history of the evolution of American Conservativism particularly in the latter half of the last century as disparate groups of paleo-Conservatives, Neo-Conservatives and Libertarians managed to fuse themselves into a cohesive unit capable of temporarily gaining control of all three branches of American government. The book also does a good job of defining the tenets of Conservativism even as it claims that there are no canonized beliefs.

The author, perhaps unwittingly, stumbles on the main problem of Conservativism, that it is a completely inconsistent and incoherent belief system. Conservatives can be pro-capitalism like Friedman or anti-capitalism like Kirk. They can be against government intrusion like Meyer's or pro-authoritarian like Bozell. They can stand against moral relativity while believing that the United States can operate under a different set of moral rules from the rest of the world as in William Bennett. The author quotes John Fischer who talks about William F. Buckley's National Review claiming that rather than Conservative it was radical, "exhibiting such telltale signs of extremism as humorlessness, utopianism, inconsistency, and a persecution complex". Fischer's definition of The National Review is actually the best definition of modern Conservativism that I could find. It is their mutual hatred of foes that binds them whether they are liberals, communists, secularist, minorities, non-Christians and on and on.

Conservatives are marked by a desire to return to another era. Buckley wrote, "[Conservativism] stands athwart history yelling Stop...." But what era shall we return to? Some Conservative philosophers like Richard Weaver prefer the antebellum south while Russell Kirk seemed to admire the 17th century. The Middle Ages is a favorite for folks like John Hallowell while others would take us back to the ancient Greeks. The point is that we always live in the worst of times and we would all be better off with strong authoritarian rulers like the Catholic Church or medieval Kings.

There is also an exhibited tension between extreme nationalism and hatred of the United States. Donald Atwell Zoll wrote, "I, like most conservatives, would be more than willing to reject a considerable part of the `American tradition' dominated as it is by influences scarcely harmonious with the conservative cast of mind". L. Brent Bozell, jr stated that the American commonwealth - from the very start - was corrupt and "bound to fail" for deliberately leaving God out of the political order. These are not quotes pulled by liberals attacking Conservatives but from a Conservative defending his own ideology.

So what is Conservativism? In the end it seems to rest on nothing more than a negative reaction to change. The author writes that the number one enemy of Conservativism is the liberal philosophy of natural rights and civil liberties. Conservativism is about the entrenchment of power and the stratification of society. At all levels from race, to wealth to gender, each will know his place. One writer for the National Review wrote that white community is so entitled to lead because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. Woman shall be subservient to men and men shall be subservient to the church. If there were one society in the world that best represented the ideal of Conservative society it would be the Taliban.
25 people found this helpful
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