Friday, I moderate a panel called "Great Books to Read in College" at the Young America's Foundation summer conference. Several big wheels of the conservative publishing industry will serve as panelists: Marjory Ross of Regnery, Mitch Muncy of Spence, and Adam Bellow of Random House.

College-aged conservatives read twice as much as their liberal peers. First, they read what their professors assign them. Then, they read what contradicts what their professors assign them. The type of books young conservatives are reading has evolved since the early days of the conservative movement. Yes, what's between the covers is quite different. But the most interesting change is neither the titles on the dust jacket, nor the words it protects, but the corporate name on the lower part of the spine. Most conservatives would recognize the books and authors young conservatives were reading, say, four decades ago. Name their publishers and the response will be a vacant stare. Victor Publishing of Shepherdsville, Kentucky put out Barry’s Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. Liberty Bell Press of Florissant, Missouri published John Stormer’s None Dare Call It Treason. Pere Marquette Press of Alton, Illinois published Phyllis Schlafly’s A Choice Not an Echo. None of these locales had been known (or are known now) as publishing industry Meccas, but each was the site of publication for a million-plus seller.

More substantial works fared better, but not by much. Witness (buy it here), the ninth bestselling nonfiction book of 1953, became a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, but only with an unusual disclaimer by the book club's editorial board. "The judges of the Book-of-the-Month Club have always recognized that a heavy responsibility rests upon them every time they select and offer a volume to many thousand subscribers. It is seldom, if ever, that they can unanimously endorse the entire contents of any book," John Marquand told club members. "This Editorial Board...cannot offer Witness to members without being frank about some reservations of its own." One publishing industry wag deemed Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom (buy it here) "unfit for publication by a reputable house," and the book that went on to sell more than a quarter-million copies received several rejections before landing a publisher. Russell Kirk had better luck. Knopf agreed to publish what became The Conservative Mind (buy it here), but only if Kirk would cut the manuscript by half. He balked, found Henry Regnery, and the rest is history.

Today, conservative writers have more options. Conservative readers have more choices. But do they have better choices? The absence of a Kirk, a Hayek, a Chambers is noticeable. Most political books now read like elongated op-ed pieces. Google and lexis-nexis searches pass for real research. The writing style resembles punchy, direct-mail letters. This formula--complete with the obligatory posed author picture on the front cover--results in books brought down to the reader’s level rather than raising the reader up to the book's level. Conservative publishing has always offered candy for the masses. Publishing, after all, is a business--and who doesn't like a quick read. But the industry once balanced these offerings with meat and potatoes. Better still, if one read enough candy one would eventually be directed to the more substantial fare. Instead of the meat and potatoes, today's candy often leads the reader to more candy--the author's website, the author's talk-radio show, the author's other books produced in eight weeks or less. This is because few of the conservative popularizers have read the great conservative thinkers.

I've often wondered: if a Russell Kirk were to show up with today's Conservative Mind, would any of the conservative book publishers accept his manuscript? Perhaps I've been asking myself the wrong question: If a conservative book publisher today released a book akin to The Conservative Mind, would anyone read it? In other words, if the conservative books published today rank a few shelves below their antecedents, it might be because the readers of today rank a few shelves below their antecedents. But who are conservatives to complain? Until recently, the gripe has been that liberal guardians in the publishing industry have shielded book buyers from conservative books at the expense of their bottom line. To replace the demand for a more market-driven approach, with a new demand for conservative editors to select books that appeal to readers' intellect rather than publishers' bank accounts, risks reinstituting the old problem in order to abolish the new problem.

Look hard enough in your local bookstore and you'll find excellent books on foreign policy by Samuel Huntington, on economics by Thomas Sowell, and on history by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. But does the young reader, who is the least discriminating of readers, discover these books amidst the clutter?

It's an exciting time to be a young conservative book writer. I'm not sure it's as exciting a time to be a young conservative book reader.

I don't think Conscience of a Conservative, A Choice not an Echo, or None Dare Call it Treason are particularly thoughtful or ingenius books. The first is a pretty good explanation of conservative public policy with a little philosophical background, the second was pretty much a political pamphlet (a very important one, that may have changed history, but again wasn't particularly insightful), and the final is a bit nutty if you ask me.

I'd take all of them over Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter any day, but I wouldn't act as if everything in the good old days was of superior intellect.

The problem isn't so much that there lacks any intellectual books, it's simply that there is connection between them and the elongated op eds. Conscience of a Conservative may not have been the most eloquant book ever, but it helped popularize the ideas of Hayek, Chambers, and Kirk. All your average Sean Hannity book does is popularize Republican talking points with a bit more vitriol and the word traitor and un-American thrown in a few times.

Your last brilliant book reveals how the truth hurts ideologues. Last year, in a post explaining your inclusion of Ayn Rand as an IM, you explain that conservatism is the rejection of ideology. However, today’s conservatives embrace it. Can we really, then, call such people conservatives? Times have changed. Ann Coulter’s “Treason” replaces John Stormer’s “None Dare Call It Treason.” Whittaker Chambers’ has been set aside for individuals so blinded by their ideology that one wonders why their books don’t come equipped with brail. There was once a time when you could trust Republicans to balance your checkbook. That Bush “can’t say no” to spending makes calling our Republican president a conservative seem ridiculous. Pseudo-conservatives now denounce ideas that used to belong to conservatives. “When ideology is your guide, you’re bound to get lost,” goes the beautiful opening sentence to Intellectual Morons. Ideology and ideologues blind us to reality. For today’s mindless book reader, it makes him deaf, too. When pseudo-conservative authors and pundits scratch ears that itch for hearing only what they want to hear, they reveal the wisdom in an age old adage. Ignorance is bliss.

If a conservative book publisher today released a book akin to The Conservative Mind, would anyone read it? People do not generally inflict discomfort on themselves. A smoker will not read up on the health risks of his habit, as an atheist will not enter the womb of a church, so why would today’s pseudo-conservatives arm – or harm – themselves with true conservativism? The truth hurts, so it is no surprise that many people avoid the discomfort of enlightenment.

The conservative ideology nowadays is a bit weak. There are only two tenets: support the president and support the troops.

If Russell Kirk hadn't died when he did there is no doubt he would have gotten the Sam Francis treatment. He would have been listed with all the others in Frum's UnPatriotic Conservative article.

Help me obi juan your my only hope.

Shadows of Power. A must read. Hey it's not 100% accurate, but it will make you think. Sometimes too much.

It depends what your looking for, I find that the choice of books today ranging from Foreign Policy to Economics to Social Issues are a veritable smorgasboard, though not all of it would necessarilly be considered intrinsically "conservative" or "Liberal" work. It is my general belief that reading a necessarilly "Conservative" book is not necessary to come to conservative conclusions.

These are the books I am working my way through this summer, some I'm finished, some not:

Foreign Policy:

The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas PM Barnett (Finished)
Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism by Thomas L. Friedman (Finished)
From Beirut To Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman (Unfinished)
The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman (Havent started yet)
The World is Flat: A Brief History of The Twenty-First Century: By Thomas L. Friedman (Havent started yet)
Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B Oren(Finished)
The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz (Unfinished)

Economics:

Basic Economics By Thomas Sowell (Havent started yet)
Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman (Unfinished)
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (Doubt I'll get to it this summer it's too huge)

Social Issues:

The NeoCon Reader, Introduced and Edited by Irwin Stelzer (Finished)
Letters to a Young Conservative by Dinesh D'Souza (Finished)
What's So Great About America by Dinesh D'Souza (Unfinished)
The Quest for Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell (Unfinished)
The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (Unfinished)
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (Unfinished)
Generation Kill by Evan Wright (Finished)
A Fist in the Hornet's Nest by Richard Engerl (Finished)

That's summer reading list is quite a handful, and is only a sampling of the books I would like to read. And though is may not all be Conservative in and of itself, I think any young conservative in today's world would do well to read many of them.

You csometimes get an accidental great book. Citadel was looking for a book about Conservative books. They turned to Chilton Williamson, formerly bookeditor of National Review, currently of Chronicles. He turned in a work of such compression, acuity and eccentricity - I'm sure they were shocked.

Also I would point out that now ISI is doing the heavy lifting - translating European conservatives, printing Tonsor - balancing it out with Santorum's book. The mainstream publishers that have added conservative imprints - Sentinal at Penguin, Crown Forum at another house- they are all looking to print a book like Sentinel's Hillary book by Ed Klein.

Perhaps the market does have some blame in this. It is not for lack of quality writers - it is a lack of quality readers that has enervated Conservative publishing.

Following discussions like this reminds me how much I don't know about conservatism! It's not as if I would have been exposed to them in the courses I took in college, though. Thanks, everyone.

NOTE: Flynn lists Hayek as a Conservative writer. For the same reasons I am not Conservative, nor is Hayek.

The essay "Why I am not a Conservative" By Hayek explains well while he, as well as I, is not conservative.

http://www.geocities.com/ecocorner/intelarea/fah1.html

Thank you so much for the C-Span2 presentation on books for young conservatives. It was very valuable for "older concervatives". I was amazed when my Long Island raises bride said she hadn't read Ann Rand! This woman DEVORES books! I'm on my way to Barnes and Boble TOMORROW for Ann Rand and you new book! Again, these tities should be a pull- down on YAF.org.

Another issue; I heard that Dr Douglas Farrgo (author of "The Placebo Chronicles") is being sued by CIGNA (probably for his accuracy, if acerbic). I thought this might interest you.
Again, thanks.
Don Hurley, DO,FAAFP
CDR USN (ret)