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Charles Murray: Happiness & Good Government

March 25, 2013 By

Charles Murrayby Bruce Frohnen

In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government by Charles Murray

Featured Book: The crux of Murray’s argument is that in order to be happy, individuals must be members of communities. Through an unerring use of examples drawn from social science, Charles Murray shows how we know, or should know, that people have a need for close personal connections, a need to be challenged, and a need to be held to real, substantive standards of behavior within real, authoritative social structures if they are to be happy. Moreover, he shows, while we generally can be decent and caring in our daily lives, the realities of political power tend bring out our pride and selfishness in ways that cause damage to the fundamental groups in which we pursue happiness. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Bruce Frohnen, Charles Murray, TIC Featured Book March 25, 2013

Sanctifying the World: Christopher Dawson

March 18, 2013 By

Christopher Dawson

Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson, by Bradley J. Birzer

Featured Book: Since religion is the heart of culture, Dawson wrote, then “religion is the key to history;” therefore “[w]e cannot understand the inner form of a society unless we understand its religion.” To understand Europe and the West, then, one must see Christianity at its center, a central theme of Dawson’s voluminous writings for decades.In this thoroughly researched book, Birzer analyzes Dawson’s work in light of the venerable thinker’s own philosophy of history. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Christopher Dawson, TIC Featured Book March 18, 2013

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization

March 11, 2013 By

western civilizationFeatured Book: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen

Christianity. Judaism. Dead white males. Old-fashioned morality. The traditional family. Tradition itself. These are the bêtes noires of the elites.They are the pillars of political incorrectness. Together, they constitute that thing called Western civilization.

Political correctness, at its heart, is the effort to dissolve the foundation on which American and European culture has been built. It has been a demolition project: undermine Western civilization in whatever way possible, and build a brave new world from the rubble. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Anthony Esolen, Books, TIC Featured Book, Western Civilization March 11, 2013

Robert Nisbet & The Quest for Community

March 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Robert NisbetFeatured Book: The Quest For Community, by Robert Nisbet, ranks high among the foundational works of post-war American conservatism. In it, Nisbet argued that the emergence of the “centralized territorial State” in the wake of the Middle Ages decisively impacted Western social organization. Nisbet was particularly sensitive to the rise of the “national community,” the total political state, and he posited that the decline of the West was intimately connected to the decline through the centuries of intermediate associations between the individual and the state. George H. Nash has succinctly outlined Nisbet’s thesis: “The weakening or dissolution of such bonds as family, church, guild, and neighborhood had not, as many had hoped, liberated men. Instead, it produced alienation, isolation, spiritual desolation, and the growth of mass man.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Conservatism, Jeffrey O. Nelson, Robert Nisbet, TIC Featured Book March 9, 2013

Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

March 4, 2013 By 1 Comment

flying booksby Robert Woods

Featured Book: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. For all bibliovores, regardless of age, this book is for you. It is beautiful in form and content, it is good in form and content, and it is true in form and content. Rarely does one find a children’s picture book that so throughly celebrates a bookish life, but also deals with some grand humane themes. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Film, Robert M. Woods, TIC Featured Book, William Joyce March 4, 2013

Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey & Iliad

February 28, 2013 By 1 Comment

Odyssey Iliadby Winston Elliott III

Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad

Featured Book: Reading Homer’s poems is one of the purest, most inexhaustible pleasures life has to offer–a secret somewhat too well kept in our time. The aim of this book is to tell anyone who might care–first-time, second-time, or third-time readers or people who have not laid eyes on the epics–some of the causes and details of that delight.

Besides telling some of the delightful discoveries any well-disposed reader can make in the epics, I would like, really incidentally, to demonstrate a way of reading the epics that will, I think, make more such things reveal themselves. “A way of reading” is not quite the same as what critics call “a reading,” that is, a total interpretative hypothesis, but rather the aforementioned mood of trusting expectation, a receptivity to the poet’s signals, and a reliance on all our own life and learning. (from Eva Brann’s introduction) [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Eva Brann, Homer, Iliad, Odyssey, TIC Featured Book February 28, 2013

Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver: Featured Book

February 25, 2013 By Leave a Comment

by Jeffrey O. NelsonRichard Weaver

Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver

Ideas Have Consequences contributed significantly to the philosophical coherence of contemporary conservatism. Frank Meyer went so far as to say that “the publication of Ideas Have Consequences can well be considered the fons et origo (source and origin) of the contemporary American conservative movement.” For Mr. Meyer, what was adumbrated in the pages of Weaver’s book was “the informing principle” of the burgeoning conservative movement: “the unity of tradition and liberty.” Dr. Weaver began his book by flatly stating, “This is another book about the dissolution of the West.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Conservatism, Jeffrey O. Nelson, Richard Weaver, TIC Featured Book February 25, 2013

The Case for Supply Side Economics: Wealth & Poverty

February 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment

supply side economics

Book of the Day: Hailed as “the guide to capitalism when it first appeared in 1981, Wealth & Poverty is one of the most famous economics books of modern times. In it Mr. George F. Gilder argues that supply side economics and free market policies are –the answer to decreasing America’s poverty rate and increasing her prosperity. He also presents arguments for the moral superiority of free-markets. Mr. Gilder goes on to suggest that supply side economics is more effective at decreasing poverty than government-regulated markets. In this new and updated edition, Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the 21st Century, Mr. Gilder compares America’s current economic challenges with her past economic problems, –particularly those of the late 1970s,– and makes the case that President Obama’s big-government, redistributive policies are doing more harm than good for the poor. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Economics, George Gilder, TIC Featured Book Tagged With: February 23, 2013

Forgotten Conservatives in American History: Featured Book

February 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment

ConservativesIn Forgotten Conservatives in American History Brion McClanahan and Clyde Wilson trace conservatism from the country’s beginnings, and discuss central conservative principles of sound money, light taxes, low debt, states’ rights, and decentralization.  Grover Cleveland, the last conservative president; John Taylor, the best political thinker of the Jeffersonian tradition; and Sam Ervin, the last constitutionalist, and others are presented as American conservatives. Through the words and actions of these men, readers will find an understanding of American conservatism from the founding generation to the present. An important book for all who wish to understand our conservative American heritage.

For this and other books by Brion McClanahan and Clyde Wilson visit The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Brion McClanahan, Clyde Wilson, Conservatism, TIC Featured Book Tagged With: February 23, 2013

George Washington: Indispensable Man-Featured Book

February 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Washington-The Indispensable Manwashington

In honor of the anniversary of George Washington’s birth The Imaginative Conservative recommends this dramatic and concise single volume distillation of James Thomas Flexner’s definitive four volume biography of George Washington. Flexner received a Pulitzer Prize citation for the four volume work. Books on George Washington may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore. (In the American Founding category see The Presidency of George Washington and George Washington: Collected Writings. Find essays related to George Washington here.) [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Founding, American Republic, Books, George Washington, TIC Featured Book Tagged With: , February 22, 2013

Founding Fathers-Lives of the Framers: Featured Book

February 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Founding Fathers: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitutionfounding fathers

M.E. Bradford’s brief lives of the Founding Fathers, free of ideological prejudices, tell us the sort of delegates those fifty-five were: gentlemen, with few exceptions, attached to precedent and custom, prescription and “ancient constitutions.” Those colonial gentlemen, so very British, were not in the least inclined to destroy the prevailing pattern of American society. More fully than most commentators upon those Framers, Bradford has carefully examined their several religious persuasions or affiliations, discovering few Deists or unchurched… [from Dr. Kirk's introduction to Founding Fathers] Find books by M.E. Bradford and Russell Kirk in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore. TIC offers essays by Dr. Kirk and Dr. Bradford. [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Founding, American Republic, Books, M. E. Bradford, Russell Kirk, TIC Featured Book Tagged With: February 20, 2013

The Essential Russell Kirk: Featured Book

February 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment

by Winston Elliott IIIRussell Kirk

With The Essential Russell Kirk, literary critic George A. Panichas captures the breadth and depth of Kirk’s intellectual project by gathering together forty-four of the most masterful of Kirk’s essays, along with a unique chronology told in Kirk’s own words and a substantial introduction that articulates the deep humanism that animated Kirk’s philosophy. The result is a carefully assembled volume that gives us a fuller picture of an extraordinary man and writer, one whose labors had, and continue to have, remarkable repercussions on the American literary and political landscape.

Books by Russell Kirk are available from The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore. Essays by Dr. Kirk may be found here. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Conservatism, Russell Kirk, TIC Featured Book Tagged With: February 19, 2013
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