The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History - Hardcover

Patrick Allitt is Goodrich C. White Professor of History and Director of the Center for Teaching and Curriculum at Emory University. He lives in Atlanta.

"This is a spirited and scouring intellectual history, likely to become a minor classic.  What is called 'conservative' is shown to be a uniquely American core of convictions repeatedly summoned to hold the fort against waves of Europeanizing assailants."—Charles Hill, Hoover Institution, Stanford University (Charles Hill)

"Patrick Allitt has written a perceptive, rigorously balanced, and richly panoramic account of conservative ideas and thinkers in American politics and culture since 1787.  This is a welcome indeed, necessary book."—George H. Nash, author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (George H. Nash)

"Allitt shows how 'conservatism' has an American history best understood in terms of its fluid meanings, plural definitions, and oppositional currents."—David Hoeveler, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

(David Hoeveler)

"Allitt's writing is lively, and he has a gift for summarizing the complicated ideas he deals with in this welcome history."—Leo P. Ribuffo, George Washington University

(Leo P. Ribuffo)

“[Allitt’s] sketches are on target, quick, and well done. ... Professor Allitt has succeeded in his goal. He writes with vigor, clarity, style, enthusiasm, and high intelligence. He obviously enjoys his subject thoroughly, and it must be a great pleasure to take his courses.”—The American Conservative (American Conservative 2009-08-01)

"Thus the book's main benefit: One learns a lot without being either lectured at or pandered to."—Mickey Edwards, Boston Sunday Globe

(Mickey Edwards Boston Sunday Globe 2009-06-12)

"Patrick Allitt has succeeded admirably in his objective of producing a compact survey of American conservative thought that will be useful to students and general readers. The Conservatives features excellent succinct summaries of key conservative thinkers, going back to the Founding era, ably conveying along the way the inconsistencies and internal divisions on the right."—Steven F. Hayward, The Weekly Standard

(Steven F. Hayward Weekly Standard 2009-08-17)

"[This] wideranging, briskly written survey of the American Right from the founding era through the end of the 20th century is no conservative history of conservatism in the sense of an attempt to vindicate a conservative viewpoint against others, nor is it a liberal debunking exercise. Rather, it is a descriptive account, situated at the crossroads of intellectual and political history, that seeks to allow the various strains of conservative thought in America to emerge in the context of the political debate of their time."—Tod Lindberg, The National Review

(Tod Lindberg National Review 2009-08-10)

"Tracing the origins of American conservatism is a challenge, especially when the very term itself was not generally acknowledged by its practitioners until the mid-20th century. In The Conservatives, Patrick Allitt has taken on the task and drawn the conservative lineage from this nation's founding to the present day."—Wes Vernon, The Washington Times

(Wes Vernon Washington Times 2009-08-21)

“Allitt’s generally unbiased and objective treatment of conservative thinkers and ideas through the decades is one of the best ever produced.”--Stephen F. Hayward, Claremont Review of Books
 
 
(Stephen F. Hayward Claremont Review of Books)