The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays

Russell Kirk was the preeminent American conservative man of letters in the twentieth century. It is, of course, easy to be critical of Kirk. His writing is somewhat opaque, unsystematic and repetitive. In none of the various subjects he wrote on he is the top-rank of conservatives. Yet, taken as a whole, Kirk's work represents a persuasive case for a specifically conservative understanding of life, morality and the American system of government. The Essential Russell Kirk collects many of Kirk's best writings on politics, culture, history and education. (I was a bit disappointed that none of Kirk's newspaper columns are included.) I hope this collection will introduce Kirk to a new generation of readers. Those who are new to Kirk might want to start with the section "The Moral Imagination," which is also the subject of an excellent new book on Kirk by Gerald Russello.

~The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays~ is an astute anthology of the late conservative luminary Russell Kirk's writings. The selections, many familiar to me, are very good. It's an excellent book put together by the brains at Intercollegiate Studies Institute. After one gets tired of reading the usual social critics and assorted derelicts that take center stage on the New York Times Review of Books, a person can take a gander at the esteemed writings of the noble Russell Kirk. The ideas that Kirk distilled into his books were distinctly American, though stressing America's continuity with her British past as well. As Edmund Burke said, "People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors." Hence, Kirk has masterfully reconnected conservatives with their past. No one has cast such light on conservative figures through the years as the late Russell Kirk. Kirk himself was a man capable of Herculean feats of ingenuity, possessed of trenchant pen, and a most remarkably reflective mind. The lineaments of the conservative tradition will continue to breathe new life, as more readers discover Russell Kirk in the twentieth-century.

Occasionally a great mind visits us and, for a time, informs us. During the last century, no man filled that role more efficiently or more productively than Russell Kirk. His scholarship, his writing style and his ability to use both in a way that bring the large problems of life, death and destiny into proper focus approached the uncanny. Although Kirk left teaching as a profession because of the corruption of the system, he remained essentially a teacher for his lifetime. For those who are strange to his writings, welcome to the world of reality; to those who discovered him long ago, The Essential Russell Kirk is a summary of the master's teaching that you must add to your library.