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Choosing Books for a Young Conservative
This is my son’s last free summer. Next year, he’ll be 16, when driving and working will distend the umbilicus connecting him to home. So, acting on a long-held, half-baked impulse, I’m going to spend this summer discussing books with him.
Since he never reads on his own the books I hand him, I’m reading the assignments right along with him. Here’s my (insanely) ambitious list:
- From Bauhaus to Our House (Tom Wolfe) completed
- The Abolition of Man (C.S. Lewis) current
- The Conservative Mind (Russell Kirk)
- Architecture: Form, Space and Order (Francis D. K. Ching)
- Poems: Wadsworth Handbook & Anthology (Main & Seng)
- Anatomy of Thatcherism (Shirley Robin Letwin)
- Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- From Dawn to Decadence (Jacques Barzun)
- Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman)
- City Comforts (David Sucher)
- How the Irish Saved Civilization (Thomas Cahill)
- The Timeless Way of Building (Christopher Alexander)
- Introduction (W. H. Auden) to The Protestant Mystics (A. Fremantle)
- The Painted Word (Tom Wolfe)
- The Weight of Glory (C.S. Lewis)
- The Great Divorce (C.S. Lewis)
- Leadership & Self-Deception (The Arbinger Institute)
I don’t expect to read every word of every book. Certainly, in the case of Kirk, Letwin, and Barzun (at least), I’ll select a few representative chapters.
What do you think of my list? What book by Roger Scruton should I add? Should we skip the Kirk and take our Burke straight-up? How about some Klingon poetry?
Published in General
How about some lighter fare?
Darkship Thieves, Darkship Renegades, and especially A Few Good Men, by Sarah Hoyt.
Anything by H. Beam Piper, but especially his Federation and Empire series books.
Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling.
Piper’s stuff is available through Project Gutenberg and Librivox. Free.
Seawriter
I’m with Seawriter. These seem a little serious and heavy for a 15 year old.
How ’bout,
State of Fear by Micheal Crichton
Before you give him The Conservative Mind, I’d recommend offering Kirk’s Roots of American Order. Also along the same lines Daniel Hannan’s recent Inventing Freedom is a fascinating read. Classics-wise you can’t go wrong with Kipling’s Kim or Twain’s Life On The Mississippi. Finally I’ll recommend a collection of terrific short essays and articles by Malcolm Muggeridge, Time And Eternity.
My 13 year old is tearing through the Tom Clancy books and those have sparked A LOT of political/military foreign affairs conversations
Lynne
We The Living by Ayn Rand
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Letters To A Young Conservative by Dinesh D’Souza
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Civilization by Niall Ferguson
How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes by Peter Schiff
Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism by Joshua Muravchik
Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
The Death of Common Sense by Philip K. Howard
And, for younger kids: No Coins Please by Gordon Korman
I’d suggest more general history and literature relative to overtly political texts. Political philosophy is wasted if you don’t have a good foundational understanding of the world. I’d also suggest that if your son isn’t inclined to read them himself, imposing a reading list on him risks creating a hostility toward the views contained in the works you impose (so in that case I would recommend Rawls’ A Theory of Justice and Rousseau).
Depends on the kid. I was reading some of that stuff at his age. I wouldn’t go straight to Burke over Kirk, a few snippets of Kirk would be better, especially since he puts the historical drama into it.
Which… depending on what he already is into, how about a little less philosophy and a little more biography? Having a storyline helps.
I read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers about that age and enjoyed it immensely. If he’s into debates and wants to make up his own mind about something that gives him the chance to do it in a context of well-reasoned principled arguments on both sides.
Something by Mark Steyn?
Makes sure he gets Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” in there. It’s short, sweet, and to the point — pointing out the evil of the “equality for everyone” PC crap he gets shoved down his throat every day in school.
Heck, then make him watch “The Incredibles” and see if he can identify the similar themes.
Conservative education doesn’t have to be dry and boring.
Roughing It
Odyssey – Go camping together; read aloud around campfire all good parts from prose version; did that, Rieu translation, Green River camping trip; was glad.
The Last Kingdom, first of Cornwell’s Saxon series, will let him know what Uhtred of Bebbanberg was up to at age 16! Boo-Yah!
(Cornwell = Burkean; latest especially = timely, timeless)
Kipling stories
Henryk Sienkiewicz trilogy & Jerzy Hoffman film versions
Story of a Secret State – Jan Karski
The Night Journey – Lasky
A History of the American People – Paul Johnson
The Birth of the Modern – Johnson; very exciting for a young person, I would think; audio version from Audible is terrific;
All Hornblower books, in order;
Have Space Suit, Will Travel
Run, Boy, Run – Orlev
Sowell
Tuchman
Harry Potter books in another language – guess the French for “magic wand” !
historical fiction from a lady’s point of view: Elizabeth Chadwick; excellent for a gentleman’s education;
The Sand-Reckoner, Gillian Bradshaw
Bastiat
Montesquieu
Mill
Smith
Kurlansky: Salt; Cod
Asterix books English, other languages – very funny to see what different translators come up with for fake-Latin character names;
Defiance. Movie first; then Tec, (extraordinary recommendation!)
I Was There, Richter
Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant
Pratchett
Totally agree on the Lewis and Wolfe books. I might remove Barzun. It’s a great book, but may be a bit heavy for a 16-year-old.
The following are worthy of consideration:
Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver (short and brilliant)
George Washington: The Indispensable Man (Flexner)
The Cold War (John Lewis Gaddis) (in lieu of Peter Robinson’s book, which I still can’t find on Amazon)
Darkness at Noon (Arthur Koestler)
Great lists, both in the main post and comments. A few more I would recommend:
Another counter-cultural book would be Jonah Goldberg’s The Tyranny of Cliches. I’m still trying to find ways of weaving “feckless crapweasel” into everyday conversation.
Evan Sayet’s The Kindergarden of Eden. It will teach him not just how to think, but how not to think.
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?
Easy reading monetarist history lesson about the sources of inflation, targeted to a 7th-grader, but interesting even for adults.
Excellent suggestion. Nash’s book is the best one on the conservative movement after WWII.
Absolutely, positively, The Fountainhead. It thrilled me at age 14 and continues to do so.
This novel was required reading in my junior high school.
Sal is absolutely correct so I would add The Federalist Papers. It takes a couple of years to digest these essays, so it’s never too soon to start.
P.J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores might be the best, and certainly most enjoyable, text on the follies of public policy out there, and number of his other books such as Eat the Rich are amusing and solidly educational for high school age kids.
Jonah’s The Tyranny of Cliches is really good for teenagers just learning how to make sense of political arguments and more digestible than Liberal Fascism (though that’s also great).
Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are educational-ish sci-fi and full of adventure. (Cryptonomicon has some surprisingly overt Christianity.)
Strunk and White early and often. Also, Stephen King’s On Writing is chock full of amazingly good advice.
Orwell — especially The Politics of the English Language. Also Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon.”
Select Vonnegut. Mother Night is a fantastic commentary on the nature of propaganda and the horrors of Nazi Germany. Bluebeard has a lot of amazing things to say about genocide and why we value—or overvalue—art, and even has a nice pro-life subtext. (Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions are also good, but a lot of Vonnegut’s other books have bad messages or are just plain bad.)
Clive James’ Cultural Amnesia is basically an intellectual history of the 20th century done in collected short, easy to digest essays on everyone from Miles Davis to obscure Austrian intellectuals. Fantastic prose, too.
FWIW, I third the Hazlitt recommendation and second Barzun.
I know people take issue with his intellectual evolution, but David Frum’s Dead Right is really insightful and a good primer on conservative politics.
Am I really the first guy to mention The Road to Serfdom?
Heard good things about Miracle At Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May – September 1787 as text for younger kids.
Any and all Wodehouse and Waugh.
Whittaker Chambers’ Witness. Make sure they love God and hate commies.
Long, but Paul Johnson’s Modern Times. And for history, hard to go wrong with Will Durant.
Eric Metaxas’ books on William Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer.
David Foster Wallace’s famous commencement speech.
I’m not a hard sciences guy, but there’s a lot of good pop science books out there that are very educational. Dava Sobel’s Longitude is kind of the platonic ideal here.
Canoeing with the Cree — classic true story about two boys fresh out of high school taking a 2,000 mile canoe trip.
George Washington’s Rules of Civility. Also, The Art of Manliness is gimmicky in places but full of good advice for teenagers.
Have them read—and memorize!—lots of psalms, verses, and good poetry. The memorization is invaluable.
I’m also a big fan of giving kids books full of lists and trivia, I devoured those as a child.
Finally, I’d recommend a lot more fiction if I had the space…
Just be aware that as if you get further into the series the author is full-blown libertarian isolationist (thinks we should have stayed out of WWII, etc.). But appealingly written, and maybe that’s worth a discussion. Or even just presenting some of the other side of the story and letting him figure it out on his own.
Who took my husband and replaced him with someone who recommends books on manners?
Good idea. . .but the boy’s mastery of the Steyn oeuvre is, if anything, more complete than mine.
And, responding more generally, the calls to lighten it up are excellent ones, except (I think) in this case of this particular kid.
Yes, yes. . .but he gobbled up both Jonah’s books within days of their arrival.
Amen and amen! Piper is my favorite author. There are still a few things under copyright, I think, but Gutenberg has a good portion of his work. If you’re talking about government and ideas about same with the Minïsphere, I really recommend Lone Star Planet. Best proposal for government ever!
Thanks. My sources within the family (the 12-yo daughter) inform me both kids already read that in their homeschool curriculum.
Oh, and it just came out, but I should mention Charles Murray’s The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don’ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life.
Dear Mark,
I can’t seem to get my teenage son interested in reading. Can you recommend something a 15 year old boy might enjoy?
GIVE HIM A BOOK ABOUT WHORES!
Many, many good ones already listed but I didn’t see Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose. That may be a good one to start with.
I’m slowly absorbing all these fantastic suggestions. So far, I’ve decided to shelve the Russell Kirk. I realize now the reason I put it on the list was for my own benefit; I read it maybe 20 years ago and did not absorb even one word of it. There was something about. . .a mind. . .that was. . .conservative. Or something.
I’m not quite ready to give up on Barzun. D2D is long, certainly, but I found it the opposite of heavy. The marginalia make the reading almost too easy, if that were possible.
Something by Bastiat sounds great. He’s only appeared on my radar very recently. Also the Federalist Papers. And Chas. Murray. Wow. So many words. . . .
I’m in the middle of this now. The history (life-span) of the riverboat industry and, in particular, the effects and consequences of the pilots union (Chapter XV) is great…and on topic.