For the past 40 years, Jeffrey Hart has taught English at Dartmouth and has been one of the editors of National Review. Started by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955, the magazine has been enlivened by a disparate group of conservative writers, ranging from Cold Warriors preoccupied with the Soviet Union, capitalist libertarians dedicated to freedom, disciples of Christianity and of Judaism devoted to morality, and scholars of ancient history convinced that there are imperishable truths and that Plato and Aristotle are as relevant now as they were in classical antiquity.

In “The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times” (ISI Books, 394 pages, $28), Mr. Hart writes from memory recollected in pleasure. He is most valuable in his character sketches of Mr. Buckley, James Burnham, Wilmore Kendall, Frank Meyer, and Russell Kirk. Mr. Hart is perhaps less reliable on the Cold War, so convinced is he that the NR was right in every position it took. But NR supported Burnham’s policy of “rolling back” communism in Eastern Europe, only to find that the United States could do nothing when the brave Hungarians rose up in 1956 and the world watched the Budapest bloodbath. Mr. Hart is also absolutely sure that conservatives got it right and liberals had it wrong in knowing how to deal with the Soviet Union – that liberalism and the Democratic Party were wimps interested more in human rights than in the necessity of an arms buildup to counter the Soviet threat.

But readers might want to have a look at the letters of President Reagan to Leonid Brezhnev and to Mikhail Gorbachev and compare them to the writings of Ambassador George Kennan. Kennan and Reagan knew what Margaret Thatcher had insisted all along, that Cold War tensions would continue until some basis of trust and understanding was established between the two superpowers.

“The Making of the American Conservative Mind” takes us on a valuable excursion into modern American intellectual history. Mr. Hart succinctly covers the controversies surrounding Whittaker Chambers, McCarthyism, the John Birch Society, civil rights and black power, and the agony over the Vietnam War. There are perceptive chapters on the Goldwater revolution, the unsuccessful administrations of Johnson and Nixon, the “Nightingale Song” of JFK, and, of course, every conservative’s favorite president, Ronald Reagan. Mr. Hart wears his biases on his sleeve. While he harps upon President Clinton as a draft dodger with an undisciplined sexual appetite, he says nothing about his discipline in stopping spending and eliminating the national debt. Nor does he make a big deal of President Bush’s escalating the debt into the trillions or Vice President Cheney’s draft deferments.

Today’s NR enjoys the able editorship of Richard Lowry and has fine writers such as Richard Brookhiser.The magazine now faces different issues from those it encountered in the past, especially the rising and widespread evangelical phenomenon, which has led some NR contributors to worry whether religious fundamentalism is compatible with genuine conservatism. Mr. Hart likes his religion highbrow, and he inserts himself into a provocative chapter on how the issue was debated in the magazine. Religion, he insists, and rightly so, must be metaphysical, beyond empirical data and sense experience, and Mr. Hart cites Wittgenstein to the effect that there is something in the beyond simply because the philosopher thought so, not because he could prove so. As an ex-Catholic, I find Mr. Hart’s explanation for miracles, the Resurrection, and other Christian claims of what are essentially mysteries far more amusing than convincing.

Slowly, but with certain deep disappointment, NR has turned against the Bush administration and its war in Iraq. The old Cold War was about power politics; the war on terror is an exercise in Wilsonian idealism to bring democracy to cultures that have had no experience with it or with the spirit of skepticism that arose from the 18thcentury Enlightenment. Burnham, the older, senior NR editor, drew on Machiavelli for political wisdom. Some of President Bush’s advisers have been influenced by William Kristol’s Weekly Standard, which claims that the mission of America is to bring the message of democracy to the rest of the world.

Mr. Hart concludes his thoughtful book with a list of conservative principles involving skepticism toward utopian thought, the importance of the nation and national defense, the role of constitutional government and the free market, and the value of religion, and, surprisingly, “beauty.” He makes a weak case for Reagan’s supporting the beauties of the environment, but he has to concede that liberals such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis did much to preserve the grandeur of New York City, where NR is located.

The one issue that Mr. Hart, as an academic and scholar of ideas, fails to face is whether America can be defined as a conservative nation. Mr. Hart’s favorite philosopher is Edmund Burke (mine, too), but Reagan’s favorite was Thomas Paine, Burke’s antagonist. The idea that the state poses a threat to human liberty is Paine’s, and it extends from Jefferson to Jackson and from Wilson to Reagan. In American history, with the exception of Lincoln and FDR, no politician has dared to make a case, in the spirit of Burke, for the virtues of enlightenment government. Perhaps that would be a worthy task for the next generation of NR writers.

Mr. Diggins is a distinguished professor of history at the CUNY Graduate Center.