New York: McDowell, Obolensky, 1959. First edition. Octavo. Original cloth and dust jacket (not price-clipped). Minor scuffing to dust jacket, and faint toning to front free endpaper, one-inch bookshop sticker to rear paste-down endpaper, else fine in fine dust jacket. Item #25

A fine copy of the third book published by William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008). Up From Liberalism was published in 1959 following the publication of Buckley’s controversial and influential God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom” (1951), which he wrote at twenty-five as a trenchant critique of Yale University’s collectivist and secularist curriculum, and McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and its Meaning (1954), co-authored with his brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell, in defense of Senator McCarthy’s public crusade against Communism. After publishing his first two works, Buckley founded National Review in 1955, serving as editor-in-chief until 1990 and establishing the magazine as a leading source for American conservative thought, often emphasizing the fusion of traditional conservative and libertarian concepts. Up From Liberalism was published in 1959 by McDowell, Obolensky and sets forth Buckley’s evaluation and critique of the political, philosophical, and economic assumptions of modern American liberalism and the manner in which those assumptions are executed in practice. In distinguishing myth from fact, theory from practice, Buckley summarizes the failures of the modern liberal project—and, in the process, he emphasizes the need for a rehabilitated conservatism. A bright copy of Buckley’s third book—a work that contains the seeds of Buckley’s future conservative program.

Price: $125.00