Russell Kirk

"Ancestral Shadows collects nineteen of Russell Kirk's best ghostly tales from periodicals and anthologies published throughout his life. In the tradition of Defoe, Stevenson, Hawthorne, Coleridge, Poe, and other master writers, these frightful stories conjure the creaks and shadows of the very places where they came to life: haunted St. Andrews, the Isle of Eigg, Kellie Castle, Balcarres House, Durie House ("which has the most persistent of all country-house spectres"), and Kirk's own ancestral spooky house in Mecosta, Michigan."--BOOK JACKET.

Russell Kirk (1918-1994) was an active participant in the intellectual, social, and political contests of our era. This memoir, written dispassionately in the third person, is a lively account of the literary and political controversies of more than half a century. This book is as much a chronicle of the confusion and perplexities of the twentieth century as it is an autobiography. Philosophical insights and religious observations abound. Its portraits of Henry Ford, the Earl of Crawford, Flannery O'Connor, the Archduke Otto von Habsburg, T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, Donald Davidson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and other notables are unparalleled.

The reach / Stephen King -- Evening primose / John Collier -- The ash-tree / M.R. James -- The new mother / Lucy Clifford -- There's a long, long trail a-winding / Russell Kirk -- The call of Cthulhu / H.P. Lovecraft -- The summer people / Shirley Jackson -- The whimper of whipped dogs / Harlan Ellison -- [Young Goodman Brown]( / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Mr. Justice Harbottle / J. Sheridan Le Fanu -- The crowd / Ray Bradbury -- The autopsy / Michael Shea -- John Charrington's wedding / E. Nesbit -- Sticks / Karl Edward Wagner -- Larger than oneself / Robert Aickman -- Belsen express / Fritz Leiber -- Yours truly, Jack the ripper / Robert Bloch -- If Damon comes / Charles L. Grant -- Vandy, Vandy / Manly Wade Wellman.

pt. 1. The color of evil. The reach / Stephen King -- Evening primrose / John Collier -- The ash-tree / M.R. James -- The new mother / Lucy Clifford -- There's a long, long trail a-winding / Russell Kirk -- The call of Cthulhu / H.P. Lovecraft -- The summer people / Shirley Jackson -- The whimper of whipped dogs / Harlan Ellison -- [Young Goodman Brown]( / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Mr. Justice Harbottle -- J. Sheridan Le Fanu -- The crowd / Ray Bradbury -- The autopsy / Michael Shea -- John Charrington's wedding / E. Nesbit -- Sticks / Karl Edward Wagner -- Larger than oneself / Robert Aickman -- Belsen Express / Fritz Leiber -- Yours truly, Jack the Ripper / Robert Bloch -- If Damon comes / Charles L. Grant -- Vandy, Vandy / Manly Wade Wellman -- pt. 2. The Medusa in the shield. The swords / Robert Aickman -- The roaches / Thomas M. Disch -- Bright segment / Theodore Sturgeon -- Dread / Clive Barker -- The fall of the house of Usher / Edgar Allan Poe -- The monkey / Stephen King -- Within the walls of Tyre / Michael Bishop -- The rats in the walls / H.P. Lovecraft -- Schalken the painter / J. Sheridan Le Fanu -- The yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- A rose for Emily / William Faulkner -- How love came to Professor Guildea / Robert Hichens -- Born of man and woman / Richard Matheson -- My dear Emily / Joanna Russ -- You can go now / Dennis Etchison -- The rocking-horse winner / D.H. Lawrence -- Three days / Tanith Lee -- Good country people / Flannery O'Connor -- Mackintosh Willy / Ramsey Campbell -- The jolly corner / Henry James -- pt. 3. A fabulous formless darkness. Smoke ghost / Fritz Leiber -- Seven American nights / Gene Wolfe -- The signal-man / Charles Dickens -- [Crouch End]( / Stephen King -- Night-side / Joyce Carol Oates -- Seaton's aunt / Walter de la Mare -- Clara Militch / Ivan Turgenev -- The repairer of reputations / Robert W. Chambers -- The beckoning fair one / Oliver Onions -- What was it? / Fitz-James O'Brien -- The beautiful stranger / Shirley Jackson -- [The damned thing]( / Ambrose Bierce -- Afterward / Edith Wharton -- The willows / Algernon Blackwood -- The Asian shore / Thomas M. Disch -- The hospice / Robert Aickman -- A little something for us tempunauts / Philip K. Dick.

In the 1960s, Russell Kirk lectured and debated on many college campuses, ably defending traditional ideas against various liberal and radical adversaries. Enemies of the Permanent Things, first published in 1969, is the most significant extended meditation on culture and politics to come out of the rough and tumble of those years. As such, it is an invaluable document, articulating the response of a critical witness to the radically anti-authoritarian turn taken by the intellectual elite in that destructive decade. Kirk defines “the permanent things” (a phrase borrowed from T. S. Eliot) as the unchanging norms of human nature. In a healthy society, Kirk argues, individuals will attempt to live by these permanent standards of moral action, and the laws of the land will give support to citizens as they make that attempt. Focusing on literature as well as on politics, Kirk sets forth and defends those inalterable truths of human life.

At Balgrummo Lodging, a great decaying house near Edinburgh, gather the grotesque members, old and young, of a curious society. Given names from the poems of T. S. Eliot, they are the disciples of Mr. Apollinax, possessor of occult powers. He has promised his followers an intensity of experience they never had known before-a kind of immortality to be attained in a mystical "timeless moment" of transcendant sensation. This rite is to be performed on Ash Wednesday, in the "Purgatory" that lives beneath Balgrummo Lodging: a pre-Christian and medieval maze sealed at the Pope's order in the sixteenth century. In this subterranean realm, to which ancient legends of diabolism cling, Apollinax will proclaim himself Lord of Time—with attendant horrors. Yet has Apollinax underestimated the sardonic old being called Archvicar Gerontion, once " a brutal and licentious soldier," who is present at the Lodging as Apollinax's necromancer? Has Apollinax left out of his reckoning a dead man of power, the last Lord Balgrummo, perhaps lingering with his murderous axe in the hollow dark?

In this now classic work, Russell Kirk describes the beliefs and institutions that have nurtured the American soul and commonwealth of the United States.

Though much has been written about T. S. Eliot since it was first published, Eliot and His Age remains the best introduction to the poet’s life, ideas, and literary works. It is the essential starting place for anyone who would understand what Eliot was about. Russell Kirk’s view of his older friend is sympathetic but not adulatory. His insights into Eliot’s writings are informed by wide reading in the same authors who most influenced the poet, as well as by similar experiences and convictions. Kirk elaborates here a significant theory of literary meaning in general, showing how great literary works awaken our intuitive reason, giving us profound visions of truth that transcend logical processes. And he traces Eliot’s political and cultural ideas to their true sources, showing the balance and subtlety of Eliot’s views. Eliot and His Age is a literary biography that will endure when much of the more recent writing on Eliot is gathering dust.

"Robert A. Taft has been neglected by some historians and political theorists and vilified by others. Vigorously and impartially written, this book analyzes the ideas and influence of a great U.S. senator of the twentieth century. Here readers will find a close and lively examination of Taft's convictions on freedom, justice, labor policy, social reform, foreign affairs, and the responsibilities of political parties. Respected for his intelligence and integrity, Robert Taft was considered the most remarkable public man of a turbulent political era. He was strong and candid, yet was repeatedly denied executive power. Despite this, he will undoubtedly be long remembered. Drawing on many contemporary sources, including the Taft Papers in the Library of Congress, Kirk and Mc- Clellan set Taft in historical perspective. Taft's enduring significance to a normative theory of politics is made clear in this careful study, which includes extensive quotations from his outstanding speeches and writings. Available in paperback for the first time, this edition includes a new introduction by Jeffrey Nelson, who has been closely associated with Russell Kirk."--Provided by publisher.