Russell Kirk (1918-1994), the father of intellectual conservatism in America, was the author of more than thirty books, including The Conservative Mind, Eliot and His Age, and The Roots of American Order. His legacy lives on in the work of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, based at his ancestral home in Mecosta, Michigan.

Wilfred M. McClay is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. His book Land of Hope, a one-volume history of America, has drawn widespread acclaim; the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger calls it "the most balanced, nuanced history of the United States I have read in the past fifty years." McClay is also the author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, which the Organization of American Historians honored as that year’s best book in American intellectual history.