Conservatism, Politics and government 

The Viking Portable Library 

"When is it not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change." Russell Kirk observes that Lord Falkland's remark, made in the early seventeenth century, touches on the essence of conservative conviction. Although the conservative impulse can be traced back to ancient times, The Portable Conservative Reader concentrates on the modern context, beginning with Edmund Burke and continuing with a rich and cogent selection of English and American writers up to the present: John Adams and Alexander Hamilton on American federalism and the Constitution, Macaulay and Disraeli on utilitarian radicalism, James Fenimore Cooper on equality, fiction by Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling, as well as pieces by Walter Bagehot, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Adams, Robert Louis Stevenson, T.S. Eliot, Freya Stark, Malcolm Muggeridge, Irving Kristol, and many others. Dr. Kirk, in addition to his thoughtful Introduction, provides notes on each selection.

Russell Kirk, critic, historian of ideas, biographer, novelist, and editor of The University Bookman, is director of the social-science program of the Educational Research Council of America. He is the author of twenty-two books, including The Conservative Mind, Eliot and His Age, John Randolph of Roanoke, and The Roots of American Order.

Taken from the front inside flap.