About George H. Nash

George H. Nash was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts on April 1, 1945. After graduating from South Hadley High School as valedictorian of the Class of 1963, he entered Amherst College, where he graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1967. He received his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1973.

Dr. Nash is the author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, first published in 1976 by Basic Books. In 1996 an updated, hardcover edition was published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. A paperback edition appeared in 1998. An expanded, thirtieth-anniversary edition was published by ISI Books in late 2006. The book has been translated into Spanish and has twice been adopted as a feature selection by the Conservative Book Club. It is considered a foundational work in its field.

Dr. Nash is also an authority on the life of President Herbert Hoover. Between 1975 and 1995 he lived in Iowa near the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, where he prepared three volumes of a definitive, scholarly biography under the general title The Life of Herbert Hoover (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.). He was commissioned for this project by the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association. His biography drew upon research in hundreds of manuscript collections and archival sources in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. His volumes are considered to be the standard works for the periods of Herbert Hoover’s life that they cover. When Volumes I and II appeared in 1983 and 1988, he presented copies to President Ronald Reagan in Oval Office ceremonies in the White House.

Dr. Nash is also the author of a monograph entitled Herbert Hoover and Stanford University (Hoover Institution Press), as well as many published essays about Mr. Hoover.

Since 1995 Dr. Nash has been an independent scholar, historian, and lecturer, with specialties in twentieth century American political and intellectual history. He maintains an active schedule of writing and speaking about the history of American conservatism, the life of Herbert Hoover, the education of the Founding Fathers, and other subjects. His articles and reviews have appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Policy Review, Modern Age, the New York Times Book Review, The University Bookman, and many other publications. He has lectured at the Library of Congress; the National Archives; the Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson presidential libraries; the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum; and at various universities and conferences in the United States and Europe. Three of his lectures have been featured on C-SPAN. He has also been interviewed by C-SPAN, National Public Radio, numerous radio stations, and the print media. In 2006 he delivered Hoover-related lectures in Belgium at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy in Brussels.

Dr. Nash is a co-editor of Province in Rebellion: A Documentary History of the Founding of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1774–1775 (Harvard University Press) and the author of Books and the Founding Fathers (Library of Congress: Center for the Book).

From 1987 to 1990 Dr. Nash served by presidential appointment on the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS), an independent, permanent agency of the federal government. The commission advises the President and Congress on library/information issues. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of Modern Age and a Senior Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. Since the Spring of 2004 he has been an Associate of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University.

Dr. Nash is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Historical Society, the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, and the Churchill Centre. He is currently president of the Philadelphia Society, the nation’s oldest organization of conservative intellectuals.