Russell Amos Kirk was an American political philosopher, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, lecturer, author, and novelist who influenced 20th-century American conservatism. In 1953, he authored The Conservative Mind, which outlined and traced the development of socio-conservative thought in the works of Anglo-American tradition, such as those of Edmund Burke. The book helped establish the intellectual framework for a religious and humanistic understanding of conservatism in the postwar era. Kirk was the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism.