In Retrospect: George Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945
It is a rare work of history that remains the authoritative treatment of its subject nearly thirty years after publication, cited by numerous contemporary historians for its content and scholarship rather than as an historiographical curio.
Reviews in American History, 32 (September 2004): 447-462.
This is a classic historiographical essay, or a history of history. I closely examine George Nash’s influential book, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, first published in 1976. Nearly three decades later, a look back at the text reveals that Nash’s work achieved dominance in the field because he was the first historian to cast aside the stale interpretive legacies of the 1950s. By overcoming the inheritance of one generation, he established a powerful legacy for scholars who would follow. Today, his work exerts a deep influence on our common understanding of conservatism in America, an influence that is deserved but nonetheless in need of critical appraisal.