Who’s Coming and Who’s Going?

Professor Clinton Rossiter’s Conservatism in America, published between hard covers in 1955, will henceforth be available in a revised paperback edition that, professedly, takes cognizance of the “comings and goings on the stage of American conservatism” in the intervening seven years. The new volume, in view of the current popular interest in conservatism and conservative ideas, will predictably have a large sale, especially on college and university campuses—where one can even imagine its being used on occasion as a secondary textbook. The question whether Rossiter’s enterprise is valid has, therefore, a kind of urgency that it did not have back in 1955, when the book was too expensive to get into many people’s hands and when, because there was a great deal less at stake politically, the harm it was capable of doing was very considerably smaller.

Conservatism in America: The Thankless Persuasion (Rev. Ed.), by Clinton Rossiter. Vintage, $1.45; Knopf, $5.00

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About the Author

Willmoore Kendall

Professor Clinton Rossiter’s Conservatism in America, published between hard covers in 1955, will henceforth be available in a revised paperback edition that, professedly, takes cognizance of the “comings and goings on the stage of American conservatism” in the intervening seven years. The new volume, in view of the current popular interest in conservatism and conservative ideas, will predictably have a large sale, especially on college and university campuses—where one can even imagine its being used on occasion as a secondary textbook. The question whether Rossiter’s enterprise is valid has, therefore, a kind of urgency that it did not have back in 1955, when the book was too expensive to get into many people’s hands and when, because there was a great deal less at stake politically, the harm it was capable of doing was very considerably smaller.

Conservatism in America: The Thankless Persuasion (Rev. Ed.), by Clinton Rossiter. Vintage, $1.45; Knopf, $5.00