03.07.2023 - By Josh Lewis
The conservative tradition embodies centuries of accumulated wisdom from some of the brightest and most inspiring thinkers you’ll find. Yet for the young conservative eager to learn more about this tradition, choosing which books to read can be a daunting task. Most online lists of top conservative books contain familiar titles of classic tomes that inspire and challenge readers to this day. Yet far too often such lists also include authors such as Charlie Kirk, Ann Coulter, Sebastian Gorka, Dinesh D’Souza, Dan Bongino, and Mike Lindell who, while they may be gifted at inflicting liberal tears, have nothing of value to say on behalf of their supposed conservative convictions. There is so much more to conservatism than owning the libs and brandishing firearms in your social media profile picture. What’s more, many lists are inflated with works on libertarian, patriotic, religious, or cultural topics that, important though they may be, are only tangential to conservatism. It is particularly challenging for us younger conservatives to cut through the noise on the Right today to explore the deeper, auspicious truths of our rich heritage. As such, I’ve compiled a list of 40 must-read conservative books worth your time and attention for this episode. Whether you read all, some, or only one below, you will be getting a healthy dose of conservative thought that cuts through the banality of most political discourse and gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a conservative. It would be an impossibility to rank these books in order of importance, relevance, insightfulness, readability, etc. As such, I have opted to list the titles alphabetically. There is no perfect place to start; just find a book that strikes your interest and dive in! In this episode I cover the first twenty books in the list: A Conflict of Visions – Thomas Sowell A Time to Build – Yuval Levin The Abolition of Man – C. S Lewis Basic Economics – Thomas Sowell Black Rednecks and White Liberals – Thomas Sowell Coming Apart – Charles Murray The Conscience of a Conservative – Barry Goldwater The Conservative Affirmation – Willmoore Kendall The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 – George H. Nash The Conservative Mind – Russell Kirk The Constitution of Liberty – F. A. Hayek Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered – Russell Kirk The Fatal Conceit – F.A. Hayek The Federalist Papers – Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay Fools, Frauds and Firebrands – Roger Scruton Free to Choose – Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman God and Man at Yale – William F. Buckley Jr. The Great Debate – Yuval Levin The Gulag Archipelago – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn