Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered

by Russell Kirk

Book Overview

In this, the liveliest and most accessible one-volume life of Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk ingeniously combines into a living whole the private and the public Burke. He gives us a fresh assessment of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0006BQQ4W
• Release Date: January 1967
• Publisher: Arlington House
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.

Customer Reviews

excellent overview of Burke's life & work

Edmund Burke is a philosopher & politician who needs to get more visibility, 200 years after his death I mean. His thought was key to British institutional & political thought during the time of the American and French Revolutions (often contrary to mainstream thought in Parliament and King George III, however). This book does a nice job providing an overview, one that is not too heavy-handed philosophically, and not so light-handed as popular history. A nice compromise. It is a good introduction and can lead the reader to other works about the period and about Burke. I am not quite clear on a previous reviewer's comment that the work was unbalanced in terms of covering only Burke's good qualities and not his bad ones. That individual must have read a different work than I did.

Great Introduction to Burke

Kirk's introduction to the life and politics of Burke is essential to understanding Edmund Burke in his time and ours. More of a Political biography than a general biography, it is still a book whose prose is very readable and understandable. A biography of a great man by a great man.