Since he burst on the world with his heavy-metal memoir Fargo Rock City in 2001, Chuck Klosterman has been one of the most successful novelists and essayists in America. His collections of essays Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas have established Klosterman not only as a credible spokesman for intelligent purveyors of popular culture. His writings and regular columns (in Spin, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine and other venues) about music, sports, and modern culture have sometimes...

Conservatism and Pragmatism builds on the insights of classical British conservative thought and classical American pragmatist philosophy in order to illustrate the methodological norms which inform inquiry into ethics, politics, law, and history. The conservative is skeptical of the ahistorical rationalism that permeates social contract and deliberative democratic theory in politics, deontology and utilitarianism in ethics, and formalism in law. A skeptical conservative begins inquiry, not with a priori principles, but within the received traditions, customs, and cultural...