This concise history focuses on the development of American conservatism in the twentieth century up to the present. Gregory L. Schneider traces the course of a once-reactionary movement opposed to progressive reform and the New Deal and describes how it came to advance alternative policies and programs that revolutionized the shaping of domestic politics, foreign policy, and economic policy. Along the way he profiles such influential thinkers as William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, Henry Regnery, and Barry Goldwater. He also details how the decline of liberalism after the 1960s helped conservatives gain political power, and how their energized activism and organization culminated in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Schneider also describes how the years since the Reagan Revolution have been decidedly mixed for American conservatives.

"Schneider takes a broad approach, considering conservatism a 'protean' movement that eludes easy definition, and succeeds in illustrating his assertion that this fluidity has allowed conservatism to flourish for an entire century. Students of political history will find a valuable perspective in this study." - Publishers Weekly

"Schneider . . . does a spirited job of walking through the standard post-Buckley history, but with a careful emphasis on what was new about its traditionalism, what was tossed away in its conservatism, what was statist in its supposed defenses of liberty." - Reason

"Gregory L. Schneider offers a more thorough [account] in his new survey, The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution precisely because it is limited to the 20th century. . . . Schneider's copious account of the post-war conservative movement is superb." - Claremont Review of Books

"Dispassionate, systematic, and accessible, Schneider makes an important contribution that will be particularly useful as an introduction for students unfamiliar with one of the central story lines of twentieth-century American politics." - Journal of American History