The Portable Conservative Reader

The Portable Conservative Reader illuminates the meaning of the conservative cause. In one of the most wide-ranging and thoughtful anthologies of conservative thought in the English and American traditions, Russell Kirk excavates conservatism's foundations. The breadth of conservative writing reveals that, at bottom, the conservative idea is not an economic theory nor a political program but a penetrating way of looking at the human condition. Here, Kirk brings together a diverse group of thinkers and material - including essays, poetry, and fiction - that articulate the conservative imagination, its veneration of tradition, prudence, variety, and the enduring fallibility and imperfectibility of mankind. These selections set forth basic premises and principles at work in the minds of Edmund Burke, Benjamin Disraeli, and T. S. Eliot in Britain, Alexander Hamilton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Adams, and Irving Kristol in America, and many more who have elucidated this turn of mind. This balanced and surprising collection is a landmark study of the most potent political force of our time.

The Portable Conservative Reader illuminates the meaning of the conservative cause. In one of the most wide-ranging and thoughtful anthologies of conservative thought in the English and American traditions, Russell Kirk excavates conservatism's foundations. The breadth of conservative writing reveals that, at bottom, the conservative idea is not an economic theory nor a political program but a penetrating way of looking at the human condition. Here, Kirk brings together a diverse group of thinkers and material - including essays, poetry, and fiction - that articulate the conservative imagination, its veneration of tradition, prudence, variety, and the enduring fallibility and imperfectibility of mankind. These selections set forth basic premises and principles at work in the minds of Edmund Burke, Benjamin Disraeli, and T. S. Eliot in Britain, Alexander Hamilton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Adams, and Irving Kristol in America, and many more who have elucidated this turn of mind. This balanced and surprising collection is a landmark study of the most potent political force of our time.

This first full-length treatment of Russell Kirk's life and accomplishments blends new biographical insights and critical perspectives about the author of the ground-breakingThe Conservative Mind.

This comprehensive account identifies different strands of conservative thought while it analyzes the current state and future prospects of conservatism.

Students of Reformed theology recognize that Abraham Kuyper was one of the premier theologians of the last two centuries. He was also a notable politician, founding the Antirevolutionary Party and serving as a member of the Dutch Parliament and eventually becoming prime minister of the Netherlands. He produced a body of neo-Calvinist political thought that has enduring value for the political engagement of the Christian community in our time. His political theory stands in continuity with John Calvin's doctrine of the church and social reformation, even as the current James Madison's teaching on church and state impacted it. While contemporary Kuyperians at times reflect a leftward political orientation, Kuyper was a champion of political conservatism who stood in the trajectory of fundamental conservative principles affirmed by Edmund Burke and more recently by Ronald Reagan. He believed that the conservative emphasis upon natural law, the need for limited government, and the importance of freedom was rooted in biblical revelation and was therefore valid for all nations at all times.

This volume, edited by Carl Bode in collaboration with Malcolm Cowley, presents the essential Emerson, selected from works that eloquently express the philosophy of a worldly idealist. The Portable Emerson comprises essays, including “History,” “Self-Reliance,” “The Over-Soul,” “Circles,” and “The Poet”; Emerson’s first book, Nature, in its entirety; twenty-two poems, including “Uriel,” “The Humble-Bee,” and “Give All to Love”; orations, including “The American Scholar,” “The Fugitive Slave Law,” and “John Brown”; English Traits, complete; and biographical essays on Plato, Napoleon, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Carlyle, and others.

In the four and a half centuries since Machiavelli’s death, no single and unanimously accepted interpretation of his ideas has succeeded in imposing itself upon the lively debate over the meaning of his works. Yet there has never been any doubt about the fundamental importance of Machiavelli’s contribution to Western political theory.The Portable Machiavelli brings together the complete texts of The Prince, Belfagor, and Castruccio Castracani, newly translated by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa especially for this volume. In addition, the editors include an abridged version of The Discourses; a play, The Mandrake Root, in its entirety; seven private letters; and selections from The Art of War and The History of Florence.

The Portable Milton is an authoritative grand tour through the imagination of this prodigal genius. In the course of his forty-year career, John Milton evolved from a prodigy to a blind prophet, from a philosophical aesthete to a Puritan rebel, and from a poet who proclaimed the triumph of reason to one obsessed with the intractability of sin. Throughout these transformations, he conceived his work as a form of prayer, written in the service of the supreme being.