This is a selective bibliography of conservatism in the United States covering the key political, intellectual and organizational themes that are dealt with in Conservatism in the United States. Google Scholar produces a listing of 93,000 scholarly books and articles on "American Conservatism" published since 2000.[1] The titles below are found in the recommended further reading sections of the books and articles cited under "Surveys" and "Historiography." The "Historiography" and "Critical views" section mostly comprise items critical or hostile of American conservatism.
Kim Phillips-Fein in 2018 argued, "an entire field of scholarship has emerged to interrogate the roots, development, and persistence of modern American conservatism."[2] Robert Mason in 2015 noted:
Over the past 20 years, the emergence of modern American conservatism – no longer an orphan – has attracted a vibrant and sophisticated historiography....Among the key concerns of historians has been to explain conservatism's transition from the political and intellectual margins in the 1950s and 1960s...to apparent dominance by the end of the 1970s, confirmed by Ronald Reagan's 1980 victory.[3]
Brinkley, Alan. "The Problem of American Conservatism," American Historical Review 99 (April 1994): 409–29.
Burns, Jennifer. "In Retrospect: George Nash's the Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945," Reviews in American History, Sep 2004, Vol. 32 Issue 3, pp. 447–62 in Project MUSE
Cowie, Jefferson, and Nick Salvatore, "The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New Deal in American History," International Labor & Working-Class History, (2008) 74:3–32; argue the New Deal was a response to depression and did not mark a commitment to a welfare state because America has always been too individualistic
Dochuk, Darren. "Revival on the Right: Making Sense of the Conservative Moment in Post-World War II American History," History Compass (Sept 2006) 4#4 pp. 975–99, doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00341.x
Kazin, Michael. "The Grass-Roots Right: New Histories of U.S. Conservatism in the Twentieth Century," American Historical Review (February 1992) 97:136–55
Lewis, Hyman. "Historians and the Myth of American Conservatism" Journal of The Historical Society (2012), 12#1 pp. 27–45. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5923.2011.00354.x
McGirr, Lisa. "Now That Historians Know So Much about the Right, How Should We Best Approach the Study of Conservatism?" Journal of American History (2011) 98(3): 765–70 doi:10.1093/jahist/jar478
Moore, Leonard Joseph. "Good Old-Fashioned New Social History and the Twentieth-Century American Right," Reviews in American History (1996) 24#4 pp. 555–73 in Project MUSE
Phillips-Fein, Kim. "Conservatism: A State of the Field," Journal of American History (Dec 2011) 98#3 pp. 723–43, with commentary by Wilfred M. McClay, Alan Brinkley, Donald T. Critchlow, Martin Durham, Matthew D. Lassiter, and Lisa McGirr, and response by Phillips-Fein, pp. 744–73 online
Ponce de Leon, Charles L. "The New Historiography of the 1980s," Reviews in American History, (2008) 36#2 pp. 303–31, in Project MUSE
Ribuffo, Leo P. "Why is There so Much Conservatism in the United States and Why Do So Few Historians Know Anything about It". American Historical Review Vol. 99, No. 2 (Apr. 1994), pp. 438–49 in JSTOR
Ribuffo, Leo P. "The Discovery and Rediscovery of American Conservatism Broadly Conceived," OAH Magazine of History (2003) 17#2 pp. 5–10. doi:10.1093/maghis/17.2.5
Ribuffo, Leo. "Conservatism and American Politics". Journal of the Historical Society, March 2003, Vol. 3 Issue 2, pp. 163–75
Shermer, Elizabeth Tandy. "Whither the Right?: Old and New Directions in the History of American Conservatism." Reviews in American History 44.4 (2016): 644–52.
Zelizer, Julian E. "Reflections: Rethinking the History of American Conservatism," Reviews in American History, 38#2 (June 2010), pp. 367–92 doi:10.1353/rah.0.0217
de Forest, Jennifer. "Conservatism Goes to College: The Role of Philanthropic Foundations in the Rise of Conservative Student Networks," History of Higher Education Annual, 26 (2007), 103–27.
Dunn, Charles W. and J. David Woodard; The Conservative Tradition in America Rowman & Littlefield, 1996
Foner, Eric. "Radical Individualism in America: Revolution to Civil War," Literature of Liberty, vol. 1 no. 3, 1978 pp. 1–31 online
Genovese, Eugene. The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism (1994)
Lyons, Paul. American Conservatism: Thinking It, Teaching It. (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009). 202 pp. ISBN978-0826516268
Mergel, Sarah Katherine. Conservative Intellectuals and Richard Nixon: Rethinking the Rise of the Right (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); 248 pages; traces Nixon's relations with conservative intellectuals from 1968 to 1974, including those who saw him as a closet liberal.
Meyer, Frank S. ed. What Is Conservatism? (1964).
Murphy, Paul V. The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (2001)
Nau, Henry R. Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan (2013)
Nisbet, Robert A.Conservatism: Dream and Reality. University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
Rossiter, Clinton. Conservatism in America. 2nd ed. Harvard University Press, 1982.
Aberbach, Joel D., and Gillian Peele, eds. Crisis of Conservatism?: The Republican Party, the Conservative Movement, and American Politics After Bush (2011) excerpt and text search
Critchlow, Donald T. When Hollywood Was Right: How Movie Stars, Studio Moguls, and Big Business Remade American Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Cunningham, Sean P. American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt: Conservative Growth in a Battleground Region (Cambridge UP, 2014)
Cunningham, Sean P. Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right (2010)
Diamond, Sara. Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (Guilford Press, 1995)
Hart, Jeffrey. The Making of the American Conservative Mind: The National Review and Its Times (2005)
Hahn, Steven. Illiberal America A History (W.W. Norton, 2024) blurb
Hayward, Steven F. The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order: 1964–1980 (2009) excerpt and text search
Hayward, Steven F. The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution 1980–1989 (2009) excerpt and text search
Heath, Karen Patricia. "New Directions in the History of Conservative Women." Journal of Women's History 29#2 (2017): 165–72.
Horwitz, Robert B. America's right: anti-establishment conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party (2013).
Kabaservice, Geoffrey. Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party (2012) scholarly history excerpt and text search
Lauck, Jon K. and Catherine McNicol Stock, eds. The Conservative Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest (UP of Kansas, 2020) online review
McDonald, Forrest. States' Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776–1876 (2002)
Malsberger, John W. From Obstruction to Moderation: The Transformation of Senate Conservatism, 1938–1952 (2000).
Nickerson, Michelle M. Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton University Press, 2012), 248 pp.
Pafford, John M. The Forgotten Conservative: Rediscovering Grover Cleveland (Simon and Schuster, 2013) excerpt
Patterson, James. Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–39 (1967)
Perlstein, Rick. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2004) on 1964
Phillips-Fein, Kim. Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal (2009) excerpt; same book also published as Invisible hands: the making of the conservative movement from the New Deal to Reagan
Reinhard, David W. Republican Right since 1945 (University Press of Kentucky, 1983)online edition
Ribuffo, Leo P. The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (1983) online edition
Scanlon, Sandra, "The Conservative Lobby and Nixon's 'Peace with Honor' in Vietnam," Journal of American Studies 43 (Aug. 2009), 255–76.
Schweikart, Larry, and Michael Allen. A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (2004), 930 pp. the most thorough textbook from an explicitly conservative viewpoint excerpt and text search
Shelley II, Mack C. The Permanent Majority: The Conservative Coalition in the United States Congress (1983)
Tucker, Garland S., III. The high tide of American conservatism: Davis, Coolidge, and the 1924 election (2010) online
Wilensky, Norman N. Conservatives in the Progressive Era: The Taft Republicans of 1912 (1965).
Agarwal, Sheetal D., et al. "Grassroots organizing in the digital age: Considering values and technology in Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street." Information, Communication & Society 17.3 (2014): 326–41.
Bader, John B. Taking the Initiative: Leadership Agendas in Congress and the "Contract with America" (1996) online edition
Berkowitz, Peter. Varieties Of Conservatism In America (2004)
Collins, Robert M. Transforming America: Politics and Culture During the Reagan Years, (2007).
Ehrman, John. The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan (2008)
Gutsche, Jr., Robert E. ed. The Trump Presidency, Journalism, and Democracy (Routledge Research in Journalism, 2018).
Hayward, Steven F. The Age of Reagan, 1964–1980: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order (2001); The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980–1989 (2009) excerpt and text search
Himmelstein, Jerome and J. A. McRae Jr. "Social Conservatism, New Republicans and the 1980 Election", Public Opinion Quarterly, 48#3 (1984), 595–605. online
Keckler, Charles, and Mark J. Rozell. "The Libertarian Right and the Religious Right." Perspectives on Political Science 44#.2 (2015): 92–99. doi:10.1080/10457097.2015.1011476
Sager, Ryan. The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party (Wiley, 2006) ISBN978-0471793328
Waldenmaier, Jacob Louis. "Mystique of the Intellectual: Heroes of Ayn Rand's Dystopias and Ron Paul's Revolution." Jefferson Journal of Science and Culture 3 (2013). available online
Aberbach, Joel D. "Understanding American Political Conservatism." in Robert A. Scott and Stephen M. Kosslyn, eds. Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: An Interdisciplinary, Searchable, and Linkable Resource (2015). doi:10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0373
Alexander, Gerard. "The Fog of Political War: Predicting the Future Course of Conservatism." Journal of Policy History (2014) 26#1 pp. 121–37. online analysis of projected demographic trends
Gross, Neil, Thomas Medvetz, and Rupert Russell. "The Contemporary American Conservative Movement." Annual Review of Sociology (2011) 37 pp. 325–54 onlinedoi:10.1146/annurev-soc-081309-150050
Perrin, Andrew J., J. Micah Roos, and Gordon W. Gauchat. "From Coalition to Constraint: Modes of Thought in Contemporary American Conservatism." Sociological Forum (2014) 29#2 pp. 285–300 doi:10.1111/socf.12084
