Right before July 4th, I finished a history of the conservative intellectual movement. The book finished in the mid 1970s, right as the conservative movement was about to take off. There is another history to be written of how conservatism's thinkers and writers saw some of their ideas become reality through the 1980s and 1990s. Leading the Way charts that history in a different way, as a biography of Ed Feulner and thus The Heritage Foundation.

The "great men" approach to history is sound if it includes analysis of their limitations, mistakes, and failures. Dr. Edwards' book tries to give Feulner and Heritage a fair assessment, and although it is a bit glorious, he mostly succeeds.

I enjoyed reading about one institution and its leader as a followup to the last book I read. Instead of just ideas, Leading the Way shows how those ideas were brought closer to reality.