Overview

"Willmoore Kendall was a man against the world, a ""maverick,"" an ""iconoclast."" His thoughts were profound, his countless enemies powerful, his personal life full of drama. Heaven Can Indeed Fall is the first full-length biography of Kendall and integrates the man with the teacher, thinker, and cold warrior. Once a Marxist, Kendall became a fearsome foe of global communism. He never apologized for supporting Joseph McCarthy. As the co-founder of National Review he helped turn the word liberal into an insult. A ""stormy petrel,"" Kendall was a man “who never lost an argument or kept a friend.” Yet he was one of the most effective and sensitive teachers of his age. His ideas shaped Cold War practices of intelligence analysis and psychological warfare. As an academic he became the premier American theorist for conservative populism. The recent reemergence of populist ideas among American conservatives makes understanding Kendall ever more imperative. This book shows how a child prodigy and bucolic boy scout became an ambitious intelligence analyst, razor-tongued polemicist and profound student of American politics. By knowing Kendall one can better understand Cold War America, and contemporary America as well."

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9781793624444

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Kendall is an important, but often neglected, figure in the conservative intellectual movement. At a time when conservatives are wrestling with the question of populism, Kendall's thought is especially timely. Christopher Owen's book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of American conservatism, and it presents Kendall's unique approach to key questions about democracy and the U.S. Constitution. -- George Hawley, University of Alabama Long after his death the legend of Willmoore Kendall endures: brilliant, provocative, exuberantly fecund, ruinously destructive of himself and others-- as attested by fascinated witnesses like Saul Bellow, William F. Buckley Jr, and Garry Wills. Now, thanks to this engrossing and thoroughly researched biography, the real-life Kendall comes before us in all his bristling complexity, the great teacher and great disrupter, more relevant, interesting, and surprising than ever. -- Sam Tanenhaus, author of The Death of Conservatism

Author Information

Christopher H. Owen is professor of history at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

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