The American Spectator

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Although there are many more books that might be added from these and other authors, these five provide a good conspectus of the conservative-libertarian thought that fueled the counterrevolution of the 1960s and led to the Goldwater and Reagan political movements. Recommended especially for younger readers — but for some older ones as well who could use a refresher course about the basics.

M. Stanton Evans is author most recently of Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

p> Major Garrett br> East of Eden , John Steinbeck. If Oprah’s endorsement (her first literary classic designee) dissuades you, don’t give Oprah that much power. There are more precise observations about the strengths and weaknesses of man and mankind in this volume than any book I’ve ever encountered. Its wisdom is sturdy, unflinching, and raw and, thus, authentically American. This is the only book I’ve ever read three times, and it’s my answer to the age-old question, “Which book would you carry with you to a deserted island?” Not in this life or any other would I subject myself to a tattoo. But if I did, it would be “Timshel.” /p>

Lone Survivor, Marcus Luttrell. A Navy SEAL’s first-person account of battlefield valor as measured by tactical courage and moral suasion that is uniquely American and, in this case, unimaginably tragic. A story of the barbarism of our enemies and the soul-searing virtue of the warriors we’ve asked to confront them.

Practical Intelligence, Karl Albrecht. You may never have heard of this author and you may think you’re a thinker’s thinker. You probably are. But that doesn’t mean you can’t think more nimbly or more creatively. If fact, thinker’s thinkers always can. That’s why this book’s for you.

April 1865: The Month that Saved America, Jay Winik. Yes, you know the Civil War. Yes, you know Abraham Lincoln’s assassination story. But here you discover and feel the pressures on our tender Republic at its moment of maximum vulnerability. Nothing, of course, is static in history. But there are variations in the velocity and frequency of moments freighted with national importance. Never before or since has a single month packed more perils or opportunities or revealed more about the tinsel strength of American individualism, American republicanism, and American resolve than April 1865.

Major Garrett is a congressional correspondent for Fox News and author of The Enduring Revolution: The Inside Story of the Republican Ascendancy and Why It Will Continue .

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