The Conservative Bookshelf: Essential Works that Impact Today's Conservative Thinkers
by Chilton Williamson Jr.

What is a conservative? What do conservatives believe? In The Conservative Bookshelf: Essential Works That Impact Today's Conservative Thinkers, Chilton Williamson Jr. discusses 50 seminal works that he believes have informed conservatism over the last 4,000 years.

For fourteen years Williamson was literary editor at National Review, and he is currently book review editor for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. His summaries and commentaries are concise, elegant and thought-provoking.

Neocons beware: Williamson has scathing things to say about the "neoconservative cabal" that counts among its accomplishments the Iraq war and an unprecedented expansion of the federal government.

While he recognizes that the neocons have certain policy positions that overlap with conservatives', he is under no illusions that they are true believers. For Williamson, conservatism means "paleo-conservativism." Catholics will feel right at home with this volume; half of the authors were raised Catholic or converted later in life. Williamson starts off the book with the Bible, and approvingly quotes Russell Kirk's famous dictum: "All culture arises out of religion."

The author's choices range from the inevitable, like The Federalist Papers, Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, and Witness by Whittaker Chambers, to surprises such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. Hemingway, Faulkner and T.S. Eliot are also represented. He even manages, convincingly, to make a place for the environmentalist Edward Abbey.

As for modern conservatives, Williamson rates Patrick J. Buchanan, William F. Buckley Jr., Ann Coulter and Phyllis Schlafly as the most significant current exponents of conservatism. Of Schlafly's many books, he picks the lesser-known The Power of the Positive Woman (1975) with its clear-sighted view of the folly of trying to remake traditional sex roles. Recent trends of young women opting for home over a life in commerce have certainly borne out Schlafly's view.

On immigration, Williamson chooses Peter Brimelow's Alien Nation: Common Sense about America's Immigration Disaster. As the threat of terrorist attacks loom larger, his concerns have come to look prophetic.

Williamson's judicious choices and commentaries are sure to lead many readers to a broader and deeper understanding of conservatism's founding principles.

(Citadel Press, 2004, 314 pages, $22.95)