Product Description

The Conservative Turn tells the story of postwar America’s political evolution through two fascinating figures: Lionel Trilling and Whittaker Chambers. Born at the turn of the twentieth century, they were college classmates who went on to intellectual prominence, sharing the questions, crises, and challenges of their generation.

A spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Chambers became the main witness in the 1948 trial of Alger Hiss, which ended in Hiss’s conviction for perjury. The trial advanced the careers of Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy and marked the beginning of the Cold War mood in America. Chambers was also a major conservative thinker, a theorist of the postwar conservative movement.

Meanwhile, in the 1940s and 1950s, the literary critic Trilling wrote important essays that encouraged liberals to disown their radical past and to embrace a balanced maturity. Trilling’s liberal anti-communism was highly influential, culminating politically in the presidency of John F. Kennedy.

Kimmage argues that the divergent careers of these two men exemplify important developments in postwar American politics: the emergence of modern conservatism and the rise of moderate liberalism, crucially shaped by anti-communism. Taken together, these developments constitute a conservative turn in American political and intellectual life—a turn that continues to shape America’s political landscape.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158828 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 440 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780674032583
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
Michael Kimmage is an old-fashioned intellectual historian, and I mean that as a compliment. What is more, he is a real writer. His extraordinary book is one of the few studies of the making of Cold War liberalism that is as alive to personality and literary quality as to politics. He provides a fuller and fairer analysis of both men's work, with splendid comparative comments, than I have read anywhere else.
--Michael Kazin, Georgetown University (20090525)

Indispensable to anyone who wants to understand the strands of modern American conservative thought, this book is at once exciting, page-turning history and a valuable contribution to the historical process that it documents. Kimmage compellingly traces how Whittaker Chambers and Lionel Trilling, starting out in the same place in the 1920s, take political ideas in equally influential, widely divergent, directions.
--Ruth Wisse, Harvard University (20090516)

Michael Kimmage has written a fascinating account of a most unlikely friendship between two brilliant Columbia University undergraduates in the 1920s, which devolved into a wary acquaintanceship in subsequent decades. Whittaker Chambers became the model for the central figure of the ex-Communist agent in Lionel Trilling's only novel, which eerily forecast the Alger Hiss case. Both were to become exemplars, in very different ways, of the conservative turn which overtook so many former radicals in the postwar world, interpreted here with sophistication and insight.
--Nathan Glazer (20090531)

The reader...is very well served by this comprehensive account of the political and intellectual life of an era that cannot be forgotten, complete with the Alger Hiss trial that shattered the comfortable harmony the country had reached. The book is a prodigious effort, and one that should act as a guide for those too young to remember.
--Sol Schindler (Washington Times 20090701)

[An] important debut book [by] Michael Kimmage--a young scholar who promises to become one of America's preeminent intellectual historians.
--Ronald Radosh (National Review 20090715)

What [Kimmage] depicts in this serious but highly accessible book is the tale of two men who were classmates and near contemporaries and, while pursuing radically different paths, reached similar philosophical conclusions that had an equally significant influence on U.S. political thought and domestic and foreign policy...Kimmage is jubilantly intelligent and convincing in his arguments...What Kimmage has done is record the ideological background to a much grander sociological, political and emotional awakening. He does it cleverly and objectively.
--Michael Coren (National Post 20090910)

A compelling read that takes us back to the New Deal era...Kimmage is at his best when showing how both men's passions led them to and from communism.
--Ron Capshaw (New York Post 20090323)

What Kimmage has done is record the ideological background to a much grander sociological, political and emotional awakening. He does it cleverly and objectively.
--Michael Coren (Edmonton Journal )

Alongside William F. Buckley Jr., Chambers can be seen as a forefather of the conservative movement that would ultimately produce the age of Reagan and Bush...Ultimately, Chambers was a propagandist and Trilling a professor. In the 1930s while Chambers was ferrying secret documents to Soviet agents in Washington, Trilling was writing a book on Matthew Arnold. Chambers reduced his vision of communism to a single, great conspiracy, while the whole purpose of Trilling's life was to emphasize ambivalence, complexity, and nuance. Kimmage recounts these distinctions with subtlety...Thoughtful, erudite, and engaging.
--Alex Goodall (Literary Review )

Astonishing. It's a masterpiece in the field of intellectual history.
--Jeffrey Hart (American Conservative )

On the face of it, no two American intellectuals in the late 1940s were more dissimilar than Lionel Trilling and Whittaker Chambers...It is the substantial merit of Michael Kimmage's excellent study, The Conservative Turn, that by the time one finishes reading it, these differences seem insignificant compared to what Trilling and Chambers had, or came to have, in common.
--Joseph Shattan (American Spectator )

Kimmage offers a rich and detailed account of one of the great intellectual dramas in 20th-century American history: the left's romance with Soviet Communism, and its painful disillusionment...Kimmage offers a new perspective on this familiar story by focusing on an unlikely pair of protagonists. Lionel Trilling and Whittaker Chambers could not have been more different in terms of personality and background...Kimmage follows Chambers's subsequent career and offers a close reading of his memoir, Witness, which became one of Ronald Reagan's favorite books. Between Witness and The Middle of the Journey, Chambers and Trilling helped at once to create and to document the conservative turn in mid-century American politics. Kimmage's book offers a thorough guide to this still powerfully resonant chapter in our history.
--Adam Kirsch (nextbook.org )

About the Author
Michael Kimmage is Assistant Professor of History, Catholic University of America.

Customer Reviews

A Tremendous Work of Intellectual History.
Michael Kimmage's The Conservative Turn is a must-have for anyone interested in intellectual history throughout the thirties and into the early Cold War. The book follows the lives of Whittaker Chambers and Lionel Trilling from their radical university days to their eventual split into competing ideological camps. Kimmage's thesis the work of these two men set the tone for the remaining ideological battles of the twentieth century. For the most part he does a good job in arguing his case. Usually each chapter is well divided between events shaped around Chambers and Trilling; as their lives become ideologically separated, so does their personal connection to each other. While Chambers and Trilling both attended Columbia in the 20s, their youthful radicalism morphs into support for revolutionary communism. In the case of Chambers this would involve treasonous acts of spying (eventually of course leading to the Hiss trial). For Trilling, his rebellion was of an intellectual variety (like his entire life). Much of Kimmage's analysis goes into Trilling balancing concerns for the growing menace of capitalist society and the lost "virtues" of European society. This of course would become Trilling's signature throughout his professional and intellectual career. One of the most effective ways that Kimmage uses to examine Trilling and Chambers is through literary analysis. Kimmage meticulously traces their literary lives- from Chambers early play called "A Play for Puppets" to Trillings early writings for the Jewish "Menorah Journal". He equally devotes much criticism to Trillings's' only novel "The Middle of the Road" and to Chambers' opus "Witness".

By the end of Kimmage's work, I felt so connected with these two men and the professional, intellectual, and spiritual challenges that they both faced. While I will admit that sometimes it seems that the thesis is a bit stretched (which one could say about a lot of things) it overall explains much of the mid-twentieth century struggles intellectuals faced in the growing threat of the Soviet Union and The Cold War. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in these issues, as well as just generally the New York Intellectuals and the New Right.

Even in a simple color scheme, there is no red without blue and no blue without red
"The Conservative Turn" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Kimmage's book interview ran here as cover feature on September 11, 2009.