Guides: Conservative Perspectives on Business & Society: Finding Articles and Books

Finding Articles and Books

This list of books was compiled by Dr. Paul Harper, Associate Dean for Inclusion, Engagement, and International Affairs; Clinical Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration.

Historical Texts

The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (20th Anniversary Edition) by Daniel Bell
ISBN: 0465014992
Publication Date: 1996-10-18
With a new afterword by the author, this classic analysis of Western liberal capitalist society contends that capitalism--and the culture it creates--harbors the seeds of its own downfall by creating a need among successful people for personal gratification--a need that corrodes the work ethic that led to their success in the first place. With the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a new world order, this provocative manifesto is more relevant than ever.
The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom; Saul Bellow (Introduction by)
ISBN: 0671479903
Publication Date: 1987-04-15
The Closing of the American Mind, a publishing phenomenon in hardcover, is now a paperback literary event. In this acclaimed number one national best-seller, one of our country's most distinguished political philosophers argues that the social/political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis. Allan Bloom's sweeping analysis is essential to understanding America today. It has fired the imagination of a public ripe for change. Book jacket.
God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley; William F. Buckley
ISBN: 9780895266927
Publication Date: 1986-01-01
"For God, for country, and for Yale... in that order," William F. Buckley Jr. wrote as the dedication of his monumental work--a compendium of knowledge that still resonates within the halls of the Ivy League university that tried to cover up its political and religious bias. In 1951, a twenty-five-year-old Yale graduate published his first book, which exposed the "extraordinarily irresponsible educational attitude" that prevailed at his alma mater. The book, God and Man at Yale, rocked the academic world and catapulted its young author, William F. Buckley Jr. into the public spotlight. Now, half a century later, read the extraordinary work that began the modern conservative movement. Buckley's harsh assessment of his alma mater divulged the reality behind the institution's wholly secular education, even within the religion department and divinity school. Unabashed, one former Yale student details the importance of Christianity and heralds the modern conservative movement in his preeminent tell-all, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of "Academic Freedom."
Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
ISBN: 0226264203
Publication Date: 2002-11-15
Selected by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the "hundred most influential books since the war" How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? In this classic book, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement of his immensely influential economic philosophy--one in which competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom. The result is an accessible text that has sold well over half a million copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and shows every sign of becoming more and more influential as time goes on.
The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism by C. B. Macpherson; Frank Cunningham (Introduction by)
ISBN: 0195444019
Publication Date: 2011-03-18
This seminal work by political philosopher C.B. Macpherson was first published by the Clarendon Press in 1962, and remains of key importance to the study of liberal-democratic theory half-a-century later. In it, Macpherson argues that the chief difficulty of the notion of individualism that underpins classical liberalism lies in what he calls its "possessive quality" - "its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them." Under such a conception, the essence of humanity becomes freedom from dependence on the wills of others; society is little more than a system of economic relations; and political society becomes a means of safeguarding private property and the system of economic relations rooted in property.As the New Statesman declared: "It is rare for a book to change the intellectual landscape. It is even more unusual for this to happen when the subject is one that has been thoroughly investigated by generations of historians. . . . Until the appearance of Professor Macpherson's book, it seemed unlikely that anything radically new could be said about so well-worn a topic. The unexpected has happened, and the shock waves are still being absorbed."A new introduction by Frank Cunningham puts the work in a twenty-first-century context.
The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk; Henry Regnery (Preface by)
ISBN: 0895267241
Publication Date: 1986-09-25
The book that launched the modern American conservative movement, now available in trade paperback.

Contemporary Texts

The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper
ISBN: 1136749772
Publication Date: 2012-12-06
Written in political exile in New Zealand during the Second World War and published in two volumes in 1945, The Open Society and its Enemies was hailed by Bertrand Russell as a 'vigorous and profound defence of democracy'. This legendary attack on the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx prophesied the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and exposed the fatal flaws of socially engineered political systems. It remains highly readable, erudite and lucid and as essential reading today as on publication in 1945. It is available here in a special centenary single-volume edition.
Becoming Right by Amy J. Binder; Kate Wood
ISBN: 9780691145372
Publication Date: 2013-01-06
How divergent campus cultures affect conservative college students Conservative pundits allege that the pervasive liberalism of America's colleges and universities has detrimental effects on undergraduates, most particularly right-leaning ones. Yet not enough attention has actually been paid to young conservatives to test these claims--until now. In Becoming Right, Amy Binder and Kate Wood carefully explore who conservative students are, and how their beliefs and political activism relate to their university experiences. Rich in interviews and insight, Becoming Right illustrates that the diverse conservative movement evolving among today's college students holds important implications for the direction of American politics.
Milton Friedman by Jennifer Burns
ISBN: 9780374601140
Publication Date: 2023-11-14
One of The New York Times's 33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall | Named a most anticipated fall book by the Chicago TribuneThe first full biography of America's most renowned economist.Milton Friedman was, alongside John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the twentieth century. His work was instrumental in the turn toward free markets that defined the 1980s, and his full-throated defenses of capitalism and freedom resonated with audiences around the world. It's no wonder the last decades of the twentieth century have been called "the Age of Friedman"--or that analysts have sought to hold him responsible for both the rising prosperity and the social ills of recent times.In Milton Friedman, the first full biography to employ archival sources, the historian Jennifer Burns tells Friedman's extraordinary story with the nuance it deserves. She provides lucid and lively context for his groundbreaking work on everything from why dentists earn less than doctors, to the vital importance of the money supply, to inflation and the limits of government planning and stimulus. She traces Friedman's longstanding collaborations with women, including the economist Anna Schwartz, as well as his complex relationships with powerful figures such as Fed Chair Arthur Burns and Treasury Secretary George Shultz, and his direct interventions in policymaking at the highest levels. Most of all, Burns explores Friedman's key role in creating a new economic vision and a modern American conservatism. The result is a revelatory biography of America's first neoliberal--and perhaps its last great conservative.
Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns
ISBN: 0199717222
Worshipped by her fans, denounced by her enemies, and forever shadowed by controversy and scandal, the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand was a powerful thinker whose views on government and markets shaped the conservative movement from its earliest days. Drawing on unprecedented access to Rand's private papers and the original, unedited versions of Rand's journals, Jennifer Burns offers a groundbreaking reassessment of this key cultural figure, examining her life, her ideas, and her impact on conservative political thought. Goddess of the Market follows Rand from her childhood in Russia through her meteoric rise from struggling Hollywood screenwriter to bestselling novelist, including the writing of her wildly successful The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Burns highlights the two facets of Rand's work that make her a perennial draw for those on the right: her promotion of capitalism, and her defense of limited government. Both sprang from her early, bitter experience of life under Communism, and became among the most deeply enduring of her messages, attracting a diverse audience of college students and intellectuals, business people and Republican Party activists, libertarians and conservatives. The book also traces the development of Rand's Objectivist philosophy and her relationship with Nathaniel Branden, her closest intellectual partner, with whom she had an explosive falling out in 1968.One of the Denver Post's Great Reads of 2009One of Bloomberg News's Top Nonfiction Books of 2009"Excellent."--Time magazine "A terrific book--a serious consideration of Rand's ideas, and her role in the conservative movement of the past three quarters of a century."--The American Thinker"A wonderful book: beautifully written, completely balanced, extensively researched. The match between author and subject is so perfect that one might believe that the author was chosen by the gods to write this book. She has sympathy and affection for her subject but treats her as a human being, with no attempt to cover up the foibles."--Mises Economics Blog
The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek; Bruce Caldwell (Editor, Foreword by, Introduction by)
ISBN: 0226320553
Publication Date: 2007-03-30
An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944--when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program--The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. First published by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom garnered immediate, widespread attention. The first printing of 2,000 copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000 books were sold. In April 1945, Reader's Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the United States alone and has been translated into more than twenty languages, along the way becoming one of the most important and influential books of the century. With this new edition, The Road to Serfdom takes its place in the series The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek. The volume includes a foreword by series editor and leading Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell explaining the book's origins and publishing history and assessing common misinterpretations of Hayek's thought. Caldwell has also standardized and corrected Hayek's references and added helpful new explanatory notes. Supplemented with an appendix of related materials ranging from prepublication reports on the initial manuscript to forewords to earlier editions by John Chamberlain, Milton Friedman, and Hayek himself, this new edition of The Road to Serfdom will be the definitive version of Hayek's enduring masterwork.
Woke Capitalism by Carl Rhodes
ISBN: 9781529211696
Publication Date: 2021-11-09
Does ‘woke capitalism’ improve capitalism’s image or does it threaten the future of democracy? From Nike’s support for Colin Kaepernick, to Gillette’s engagement with the toxic masculinity debate, the 21st century has seen a sharp increase in corporations taking over public morality, a phenomenon which has come to be known as ‘woke capitalism’. Carl Rhodes takes us on a lively and fascinating history of woke capitalism – from 1950s corporate social responsibility, through 1980s neoliberalism, tracing it alongside the adoption and mutation of the term ‘woke’ from Black American culture – and brings us right up to current-day debates. By examining the political causes that woke capitalism has co-opted, and the social causes that it has not, he argues that this surreptitious extension of capitalism has serious implications for us all.Does ‘woke capitalism’ improve capitalism’s image or does it threaten the future of democracy? From Nike’s support for Colin Kaepernick, to Gillette’s engagement with the toxic masculinity debate, the 21st century has seen a sharp increase in corporations taking over public morality, a phenomenon which has come to be known as ‘woke capitalism’. Carl Rhodes takes us on a lively and fascinating history of woke capitalism – from 1950s corporate social responsibility, through 1980s neoliberalism, tracing it alongside the adoption and mutation of the term ‘woke’ from Black American culture – and brings us right up to current-day debates. By examining the political causes that woke capitalism has co-opted, and the social causes that it has not, he argues that this surreptitious extension of capitalism has serious implications for us all..

What is scholarly information?

Scholarly information is based on in-depth research and is considered to be higher quality and more reliable information. Scholarly and peer reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, and conference proceedings are all examples of scholarly information.

PittCat is the main searching tool for all of the materials owned by the University Library System (ULS), including articles, books, ebooks, journal articles, ejournals, audio and video, digital images, government documents, microfilm and movies.

Pittcat
Access PittCat directly or use the ULS homepage.

Searching Techniques

Use the PittCat Advanced Search to combine keywords in a search string or use these sample subject term searches:

Conservatism -- History
Conservatism -- United States
Conservatism -- United States -- History -- 19th century

Conservatism -- United States -- History -- 20th century

Keyword Searching - You can search the catalog using keywords related to your topic. Here's a good exercise to help you generate keywords:

Express your topic in a topic sentence
Generate keyword search terms by identifying the main ideas or concepts within the topic sentence
Expand your search terms by brainstorming related terms or synonyms that describe your main ideas.

Phrase Searching - PittCat allows for phrase searching with the use of “ “. For example, the search "Conservative economic policy" will find only results containing those two words next to each other in that order. Remember: Exact phrase searches can focus your results, but they can also miss some relevant results.

Advanced Searching - Check the Advanced Search for more tips and techniques to enhance your search, including Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT). Note: Boolean Operators must be entered in all uppercase/capital letters.

AND - Narrows and focuses the search results. The search economic and development finds only results containing both the terms
OR - Broadens the search results. Searching economic or development will find results containing the term economic or the term development or both terms in the same result.
NOT - Excludes any result containing the term listed after the not. The search development not economic will find results containing the term development but not containing the term economic. Use NOT cautiously since it excludes ALL mentions of the term in every context.

Reference articles are great places to find background information on any topic. Scholarly reference works are useful for the following:

An overview of a topic
Topic ideas for a paper topic or narrowing your topic
Finding keywords for searches
Bibliographies for further research

Conservatism in the U.S. Concept Map

Use this Credo Concept Map on Conservatism in the United States to access key reference articles on parts of the movement.

Reference Databases

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Online reference library that provides access to a selection of reference books. CredoReference also includes cross-references to other full text titles containing related information.
Gale Ebooks This link opens in a new window
Gale Ebooks is a database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.
CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
The CQ Researcher, founded in 1923 as Editorial Research Reports, is your complete source for in-depth, analytical reporting on the most current and controversial issues of the day. The objective, forward-looking reporting that characterizes these articles is designed to encourage discussion, to help readers think critically and to facilitate further research. Topics range from social and teen issues to environment, health, education and science and technology.
America: History & Life (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
America: History and Life is a comprehensive bibliography of articles on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Each volume offers abstracts and citations for some 8,000 articles appearing in over 2,000 journals published worldwide in history, related humanities, and the social sciences.

Scholarly databases are online collections of high quality scholarly research information that can be searched by topic or keyword. Databases are great sources for full text of articles, photographs, newspapers, and more. Use the featured databases below for information on economics topics.

General Databases

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
This scholarly collection provides journal coverage for most academic areas of study, including biological sciences, economics, communications, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts and literature, medical sciences and women's studies. This is an EBSCOHost database.
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Business Source Complete provides full-text business journals and hundreds of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals covering all aspects of business; marketing, management, economics, finance, accounting, international business and more.

Socio-economic and Political Databases

NBER This link opens in a new window
Founded in 1920, the National Bureau of Economic Research is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The NBER is committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community.

RePEc (Research Papers in Economics)
RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), the world's largest collection of over 1.5 million on-line Economics working papers, journal articles and software, is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 82 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in Economics and related sciences. The heart of the project is a decentralized bibliographic database of working papers, journal articles, books, books chapters and software components, all maintained by volunteers. The collected data is then used in various services included EconLit.

PAIS Index This link opens in a new window
Since its establishment in 1914, PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) has chronicled issues in the public debate through highly selective coverage of a wide variety of sources. The PAIS Archive provides historical perspective on many of the 20th century's public and social policies.
Policy File Index This link opens in a new window
Covers all public policy issues and it draws its content from public policy think tanks, university research programs, research organizations and publishers.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts is building on the merged backfiles of Political Science Abstracts and ABC POL SCI, published by ABC-CLIO. The database provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration / policy.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is often helpful for finding scholarly articles on your topic. It includes links to articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, pre print repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Many articles provide links to other articles that have cited the first article. Some articles may contain statistical content.

Features of Google Scholar

Search diverse sources from one convenient place
Find articles, theses, books, abstracts or court opinions
Locate the complete document through your library or on the web
Learn about key scholarly literature in any area of research

University of Pittsburgh Library System

Course & Subject Guides

Conservative Perspectives on Business & Society