In this, the liveliest and most accessible one-volume life of Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk has ingeniously combined the public and the private man into a living whole. He lucidly unfolds Burke''s philosophy and offers a fresh assessment of Burke, a statesman enjoying even greater influence today than in his own time.

Kirk defines four great struggles in the life of Burke: his work for conciliation with the American colonies; his involvement in cutting down the domestic power of George III; his prosecution of Warren Hastings, the governor general of India; and his resistance to Jacobinism, the French Revolution''s "armed doctrine." In each of these great phases of his public life, Burke fought with passionate eloquence and relentless logic for his ideals of justice, ideals that continue to appeal today.