Further reading
General introductions to conservative thought and practice include: Noel O’Sullivan,
Conservatism(London: Dent, 1976); Ted Honderich, Conservatism(London: Penguin, 1991);
Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001). Both Scruton
and Honderich are quite polemical – Scruton from a right-wing perspective sympathetic to
conservatism, Honderich from a hostile left-wing perspective. John Kekes, A Case for
Conservatism(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), is not an introduction but is
interesting if you want a more involved defence of conservatism. There are various anthologies
of conservative thought, the most useful being Roger Scruton (ed.) Conservative Texts: An
Anthology(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), and Jerry Muller (ed.) Conservatism: An
Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present(Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1997). In these books you will find extracts from the most
important conservative thinkers, including the four discussed in this chapter. Scruton has
also edited a series of essays on conservative thinkers, although, as with the anthologies, the
definition of ‘conservative’ is stretched quite wide: Roger Scruton (ed.) Conservative Thinkers:
Essays from the Salisbury Review(London: Claridge, 1988). Finally, a discussion of Strauss’s
influence on US conservatism can be found in Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American
Right(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997).Weblinks
See the Companion Website for further resources.Chapter 9 Conservatism 211