Whittaker Chambers recounts his early work with the Communist Party, his later renunciation of that life, the astounding Hiss/Chambers case, and how his faith in God—and his fellow Americans—ultimately led him to reject Communism.

William F. Buckley Jr. criticizes—with extraordinary reason and perception that has withstood the test of time—the university and faculty at Yale for fostering atheistic socialism within its student body. The ideas found in this surprise bestseller sparked a movement still active today, fighting the “politically correct” forces on campuses nationwide.

The classic synthesis of the American conservative tradition and its English roots. In print since 1954, this newest edition contains chapters devoted to Edmund Burke, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Samuel Coleridge, John Calhoun, Alexis de Tocqueville, Benjamin Disraeli, Henry Adams, George Santayana, and many others—including conservatism’s critics and enemies.

Romano Guardini’s classic novel of the life of Christ illuminates the psychology and personality of Jesus. With an introduction by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, Gateway Editions presents the only available English translation of The Lord, which has had a profound impact not only on Cardinal Ratzinger, who was a student of Guardini’s, but also on the papacy of John Paul II.

This work was written by St. Augustine late in his life with the intention of supplying a well-educated Roman layman with a brief but comprehensive exposition of the essential teachings of Christianity. It contains his most profound and mature definitions of sin, grace, and predestination, and is regarded as an indispensable guide to Augustinian Christianity.

by Jean-Paul Sarte

0-89526-702-0, $10.95, paperback

In this, a classic in the philosophical defense of freedom, individuality, and human dignity, Jean-Paul Sarte’s existential understanding of man, his rejection of naturalistic or mechanical determinism, and his affirmation of man’s ultimate freedom and responsibility lead him to a brilliant critique of Freudianism and to an outline of how an existential psychoanalysis might be developed.

by Karl von Clausewitz

0-89526-401-3, $12.95, paperback

For the strategist—whether in business, military, or any other competitive field of endeavor—here is the essence of the greatest military thinker in the western world. This celebrated abridgement and translation by Colonel Edward M. Collins has since become a set military text and is credited by Colonel Summers with helping with American military achieve its smashing victory in the Persian Gulf. No student of war or strategy can ignore it, and no educated person’s bookshelf should be without it.

by John Locke

0-89526-402-1, $12.95, paperback

John Locke, whose thought is generally associated with the doctrines of empiricism and classical liberalism, offers an antidogmatic and rational perspective on the Gospels in The Reasonableness of Christianity. One of the greatest Western philosophers, Locke is most famous for his Essay Concerning Human Understanding and The Second Treatise on Government.

by Peter J. Stanlis

0-89526-398-X, $35.00, hardcover

From Burke’s earliest works to his thoughts on America and the British Empire, Ireland and Catholic Emancipation, and the French Revolution, The Best of Burke includes the most poignant and profound points of Burke’s political philosophy. This is one of the few books that can truly be called essential for well-read conservatives.

by Adam Smith

0-89526-363-7, $35.00, hardcover

Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) lays the foundation for a general system of morals and is a text of central importance in the history of moral and political thought. It presents a theory of the imagination that Smith derived from David Hume but which encompasses an idea of sympathy in some ways more sophisticated than anything in Hume’s philosophy. The enduring legacy of his work is its reconstruction of the Enlightenment idea of a moral, or social, science encompassing both political economy and the theory of law and government.

by Adam Smith

0-89526-335-1, $35.00, hardcover

No book has done more to instruct, enlighten, and inform conservatives about economics that Adam Smith’s undisputed classic The Wealth of Nations. Published in 1776, it was the intellectual counterpart of the volleys fired at Lexington and Concord—a stirring cry for economic freedom that resonates to this day. It is the very basis for the thoughts of contemporary conservative economists like Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell.

by Alexander Hamilton

0-89526-303-3, $35.00, hardcover

No book or document outside the Constitution itself is cited more often in our national political debates than The Federalist (popularly known as The Federalist Papers). On issue after issue—impeachment, taxes, the proper size and scope of government—this collection of constitutional commentaries by three of our most influential Founders are invoked nearly every day, more than 200 years after they first appeared.

by Bruce Frohnen

0-89526-260-6, $35.00, hardcover

The Anti-Federalists’ opposition to the Constitution’s original draft produced the Bill of Rights—whose inclusion drastically altered the original composition and purposes of the new governing document. In other words, the Anti-Federalist writings reveal strands in the American political tradition that are not well known but should be, given their formative impact on that tradition.

by George W. Carey

0-89526-292-4, $35.00, hardcover

This founding father challenges the assumptions of the reigning political philosophies of our day, and as The Political Writings of John Adams demonstrates, he does it ably and with power. Anyone hoping to understand the thought of America’s second president, first political philosopher, and most trenchant conservative will find this book indispensable.

by John Taylor

0-89526-217-7, $35.00, hardcover

Later American statesmen such as John C. Calhoun considered Taylor must reading for an understanding of the nature of the American federal republic. For that historical reason alone, New Views of the Constitution is worth reading. And in our era of bloated government and rule by judicial fiat, Taylor teaches us something we need to remember about our constitutional order.

by James Fenimore Cooper

0-89526-242-8, $34.95, hardcover

The American Democrat, Cooper’s final work of social and political criticism, offers a realistic yet critical assessment of America and its political institutions. In Cooper, the American political tradition has one of its greatest public defenders of republicanism—the original, authentic vision of our nation’s Founders.

by James Monroe

0-89526-229-0, $35.00, hardcover

The first significant collection of the writings of the fifth president in over a century. A pupil and lifelong friend of Thomas Jefferson, Monroe closed the generation of the Founding Fathers by implementing his vision of a nation stretching from sea to sea, an independent power in the world affairs yet free of foreign entanglements. Monroe’s letters, both private and public, are splendidly articulate and full of acute observations.

by Alexis de Tocqueville

0-89526-160-X, $35.00, hardcover

In the mid-1800s, a French political scientist named Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States to appraise the meaning and functioning of democracy. This extraordinary book, written as a result of his visit, contains his comments and criticisms—many of which are still vital in today’s world—and is a must-read for anyone interested in American politics.

edited by Thomas E. Woods

0-89526-154-5, $35.00, hardcover

The roots of twenty-first-century America’s populist conservatism lie, it turns out, in Rufus Choate and the American Whigs. Choate advocated strong but not tyrannous national government, local control of local governments, stable families, and high personal morality. Any polity searching to deepen its concern for its own citizens and reconcile that solicitude with its responsibilities to the world at large will find Choate a valuable wellspring.

edited by Lee Cheek, Jr.

0-89526-179-0, $35.00, hardcover

If you hear about John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) at all nowadays, it’s from liberals who try to tar him as a Southern-partisan relic whose thought was antiquated even in his own day. But conservatives who don’t know Calhoun are depriving themselves of one of the most formidable defenses of liberty and republican government ever crafted. In Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches, you will find complete texts of his two major treatises, The Disquisition and The Discourse, plus a comprehensive collection of other important writings.