Just before closing
[Rod Dreher  03/31 04:17 PM]

Max Goss over at Right Reason has a mixed review of “Crunchy Cons.” It’s a fair review, certainly, and I’m grateful for his attention to the book. It does sound like the reviewer wanted the book to be more intellectual – a criticism I’ve heard a few times. I see the point, but as my then-editor at Crown told me when she bought the book, she wanted “Crunchy Cons” to be not a book of theory, but mostly a book of stories from real people about how they live their lives. I think this was the right call, though I did end up chucking a chapter I’d halfway completed focusing on the intellectual roots of traditionalist conservatism. I have been gratified to have reached a popular audience of cultural conservatives who don’t normally read political books, but who have written to me to tell me how much they relate to the kind of things the crunchy-cons interviewed in the book talk about. And if “Crunchy Cons” drives them to read Weaver, Kirk, Berry, or any of the other writers we’ve been talking about here for the last five weeks, I couldn’t be happier.