Ideas Have Consequences.

WEAVER, Richard M.

Item Number: 34048

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948.

First edition of this foundational text of modern conservative thinking. Octavo, orirginal cloth. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For P. Albert Duhamel with high esteem from Richard M. Weaver.” The recipient, Albert Duhamel was a professor who taught at Boston College for nearly 50 years and was a friend of the author’s. Near fine in a good dust jacket with some wear to the extremities and a chip to the crown of the spine. This is the first example we have seen signed. Rare and desirable.

Originally published in 1948, at the height of post–World War II optimism and confidence in collective security, Ideas Have Consequences uses “words hard as cannonballs” to present an unsparing diagnosis of the ills of the modern age. Widely read and debated at the time of its first publication,the book is now seen as one of the foundational texts of the modern conservative movement. “This deeply prophetic book not only launched the renaissance of philosophical conservatism in this country, but in the process gave us an armory of insights into the diseases besetting the national community that is as timely today as when it first appeared. Ideas Have Consequences is one of the few authentic classics in the American political tradition" (Robert Nisbet).