As this posthumous collection of essays suggests, Weaver felt most at home writing about the old South, which was his birthplace, the topic of his dissertation, and the subject for which he reserved his highest praise.

To Weaver the evils of the world were rooted in modernism, industrialism, materialism, and nationalism, all of which he blamed on Union victory. At one point Weaver even asserted that total war -- war unrestrained by chivalry or other ethical restraints -- was a northern custom which had led to the rise of National Socialism in Germany.

The stark line Weaver drew between South and North, with divergent and logical worldviews ascribed to each, was for him the line between good and evil. In reducing every issue to either-or, Weaver oversimplified his subjects, so that his essays resemble legal arguments: Haynes v. Webster, Thoreau v. Randolph, Lee v. Sherman, Emerson v. Warren. In each case, Weaver's preference is obvious.

I found the strongest essays to be in section one, about southern literature and the Agrarian writers. Here are many useful and profound insights that time has not diminished. When Weaver leaves his specialty, however, his comments are less persuasive, amounting to sweeping sociological observations and cheerleading for the old South.

The converse of Weaver's feeling at home in an imagined South is feeling alienated in an imagined North. Although he spent most of his career teaching literature at the University of Chicago, he isolated himself from the city both physically and intellectually. Perhaps if Weaver had made more effort to adapt, he would have left us a richer legacy, one less marked by decline and defeat.

I admire Weaver's work a great deal. He should be praised for showing, from a conservative perspective, the limitations of capitalism, industrialism, and modernism, limitations which are more often the outcry of the radical left and dismissed as anti American. He would have been wise to consider also the limitations of the old South. I am less willing to blame today's discontents on Union victory. In Weaver's rigid arguments, moreover, there is little to be learned about the vital American principles of acceptance, pluralism, and compromise.

Sometimes it is difficult to sort out the contradictions in Weaver's work, but I prefer to keep in mind his comments from Ideas Have Consequences: Piety accepts the right of others to exist, and it affirms an objective order, not created by man, that is independent of the human ego.

In short, if you are a friend of the South, or would like to read the words of a man who can explain the conservative axiology, this book is for you. The contents are essential for anyone seeking a neoclassical education. For me, reading Richard Weaver's Southern Essays brings together the final sentences of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily."

"Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair."

The book is a monument to Lee and Jackson. Anyone who wants to understand Picket's charge needs to read this excellent book.

This is a marvelous book, and a marvelous collection of essays, written by a clear and conscientious southern conservative. Richard Weaver was heir to the Southern Agrarian tradition of protest and opposition to the directions modern American society and politics was taking, particularly in the New Deal and post WW II eras. Writers like John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Allan Tate, Caroline Gordon and Robert Penn Warren, were caustic critics of modernity, of the decline in community, and a sense of the common good. Weaver, an english professor who might better be described as an intellectual, lived, learned, and worked in this tradition. Of all the essays in this collection, all of which are well written and thoughtful, two stand out in my mind. His essay on 'Lee the Philosopher' captures the pragmatic and common-sense spirit of southern political and social thought. Southerners felt little need for abstract theorizing, or great theoretical and philosophical models. Simple, everyday ideas, the ideals of common sense and everyday life, were more than enough for the down-to-earth farmers and planters of the American South. Weaver does a brilliant job of portraying Genl Lee as the epitome of the southern ideal of both gentlemanly duty and social thought. The second wonderful piece is 'The Two Types of American Individualism'. Weaver contrasts the individualism of a character like John Randolph of Roanoke, a fixture on the Virginia political scene in the early 1800's, with the individualism of Thoreau (and by implication the North). Randolph was a supreme example of an eccentric indivdual. He had bouts of insanity throughout his like, fought duels, appeared on the floor of Congress with his hunting dogs, jug of hard cider and his slave attendant, and refused to toe the party line. Yet, when the needs of his community demanded, or the society in which he lived was threatened, he was willing- even eager- to rally to the cause and defend it, despite his personal believes and misgivings. Weaver felt that Thoreau, on the other hand, with is notions of civil disobedience and voluntary taxation, put the individual ahead of the community, and would refuse to defend anything that was not justified according to his principles and beliefs. This was recipe for chaos and disorder, and disintegration. Weaver leaves no doubt as to which he preferes. The division between community and tradition, and individual liberty is a fault line that continues to run through American political and social ideas. Weaver, in powerfully defending tradition and community, has been one of the men shaping current political discourse, particularly among the social conservatives and in the religious right. He deserves to be read.