SOURCE: Tonsor, Stephen J. “Russell Kirk: 1918-1994.” Modern Age 37, no. 2 (winter 1995): 99-101.

In the following essay, Tonsor credits The Conservative Mind with igniting and legitimizing contemporary conservatism.

New eras, whether in religion, science, or politics, usually begin with a book. When The Conservative Mind was published by Regnery in the spring of 1953 few suspected the book was the harbinger of the most important political changes of the twentieth century. Its author, Russell Kirk, was an unknown assistant professor at a Midwestern cow college whose president had been a professor of poultry husbandry. Providence has a strong sense of irony.

The previous summer Henry Regnery, while on vacation with his family at a farm he owned in West Virginia, read the impeccably prepared manuscript. Regnery knew immediately “that this was an important and perhaps a great book. …” The manuscript had been found—perhaps discovered is the better word—by...