A conservative reading list. (Scan).(excerpted from 'Letters to a Young Conservative')(Bibliography)

As our combined boon-to-self-education and aid-to-Christmas-gift-shoppers, here is a book list for the mind and soul. It is drawn from the final chapter of Dinesh D'Souza's new book Letters to a Young Conservative, just out.

To be an educated conservative, you have to be familiar with the "best that has been thought and said." Here, then, is my list of the most important works produced in the past half century that a young conservative should read. It includes books written by conservatives, as well as books by writers who would not call themselves conservatives--like Margaret Mead and George Orwell--that discuss themes important to conservatism. I have kept the list brief, because life is short.

Robert Bork, The Tempting of America (1990): The single best critique of liberal jurisprudence, and an argument for interpreting the Constitution by consulting the intentions of the framers.

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (1987): A great teacher's learned account of how our best young minds came to the conclusion that there are no truths.

Patrick Buchanan, Right From the Beginning (1988): A pugnacious and absorbing account that shows the attractions, and weaknesses, of the author's tribal conservatism.

Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952): A profoundly personal and deeply moving account of one man's liberation from the shackles of communism.

George Gilder, Men and Marriage (1986): An iconoclastic argument for why "women's liberation" produces angry women and emasculated men.