Teaching the Virtues

Everything starts with a book, according to a saying in publishing.

I don’t know about everything, but books shape intellectual and cultural milieus. Books built American conservatism, for example.

That is why the Russell Kirk Center is excited to announce Mecosta House, a new publishing imprint. Mecosta House is dedicated to promulgating the legacy of Russell Kirk, and the tradition he articulated from his beloved Piety Hill in his ancestral village of Mecosta, from which we take our name.

Our mission is rooted in reverence for the Permanent Things—those timeless principles and moral norms that uphold the family, religion, private property, schools, and the social bonds and associations that, as Edmund Burke wrote, hold us together in a partnership between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born.

At Mecosta House, we aim to combine with the Kirk Center’s programs to foster an intellectual community dedicated to exploring the wisdom of our predecessors while forging a new conservative humanism.

We hope our readers will be edified by the titles we publish, and that they will strengthen the programs and the courses we will introduce at the Kirk Center as part of our School of Conservative Studies. 

In all we do in Mecosta and beyond, we aim to give each new generation access to the beliefs, practices, and institutions that are the foundation of America’s constitutional achievement in ordered liberty.

We are proud to present David Hein’s Teaching the Virtues as our first book. In the future, we will publish the occasional new editions of classic works by Russell Kirk, humane literature, essay collections, reprints, and new works in the old tradition.

Welcome home to Mecosta House!