SOURCE: Genovese, Eugene D. “Captain Kirk.” New Republic 213, no. 24 (11 December 1995): 35-38.

In the following review, Genovese favorably reviews Kirk's memoir, The Sword of Imagination: Memoirs of a Half-Century of Literary Conflict.

When Russell Kirk died last year at the age of 76, America lost one of its most respected intellectuals and strongest conservative voices. Just before he died, Kirk completed his memoirs. They provide a delightful account of his extraordinary and idiosyncratic life, and a valuable introduction to his voluminous writings—essays, reviews and thirty books, on John Randolph of Roanoke, Edmund Burke, T. S. Eliot, the Constitution, political theory and much else.

Kirk's reputation was launched in 1953 with the appearance of The Conservative Mind, which has gone through edition after edition and continues to serve the conservative movement as an exposition of principles and a history of ideas. Kirk conceived The Conservative Mind as “a lesson in normative...