Author

Russell Kirk

1918-1994 · American historian and political theorist of postwar conservatism

Short biography: Russell Kirk in Great Lives

About Russell Kirk

Russell Kirk (1918–1994) was an American historian, political theorist and writer of ghost stories, born in Plymouth, Michigan. After service in the Army during the Second World War he earned a doctorate at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he wrote the dissertation that became The Conservative Mind. He taught briefly at Michigan State College, then lived and wrote at his family home in Mecosta, Michigan, founding the journals Modern Age and The University Bookman. He became a Catholic in 1964.

Notable works

The Conservative Mind (1953)
The Roots of American Order (1974)

On this site

The Conservative Mind

Russell Kirk

1953 · Postwar Contemporary · Political Theory

The Conservative Mind is a history of conservative thought in Britain and the United States from Edmund Burke to the twentieth century. Russell Kirk, then a young historian, published it in 1953 with the Henry Regnery Company under the subtitle From Burke to Santayana; later revised editions carried the subtitle From Burke to Eliot.

Power / Politics Faith / Religion Class / Society