The Conservative Revolution: The Movement That Remade America

The Conservative Revolution describes how a modern intellectual movement muscled its way into American politics by examining the lives of four major right-wing figures: Ohio senator Robert Taft, who might have become president if Dwight Eisenhower had chosen not to run in 1952; Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, whose 1964 campaign energized young conservatives even as LBJ trounced him; Ronald Reagan, the man conservatives think belongs on Mount Rushmore; and Newt Gingrich, who put the GOP in charge of Congress for the first time since the 1950s and then stumbled at the hard task of running a majority party. Edwards himself is a conservative partisan, and admits that "those seeking absolute objectivity will not find it here." (But then, they won't find it in the writings of establishment liberals like Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., either.)

This is a strong survey of a vital American political movement that grew in strength over the course of half a century. Edwards's deep knowledge of his subject makes this a uniquely valuable book--perhaps even the best available on the subject--and a fine companion volume to George H. Nash's essential tome The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. --John J. Miller