Good Order: Right Answers to Contemporary Questions.

Good Order: Right Answers to Contemporary Questions, edited by Brad Miner (Touchstone, 304 pp., $15)

An anthology of "conservative essays, some actually written by conservatives," this book is a showcase for fine writing on questions of crucial relevance, as it leads the reader through "Spiritual, Social, Economic, Political, and Cultural Orders." In his contribution, the late Allan Bloom wrote, "Contrary to the popular prejudice that America is the nation of . . . anti-intellectual people, where ideas are at best means to ends, America is actually nothing but a great stage on which theories have been played." Which is to say, ideas matter. This is the most important lesson one takes from the essays, contributions to serious thought on what is and should be, by writers including Peter Kreeft, Charles Murray, and Thomas Sowell. In his introduction, Mr. Miner, a former NR literary editor, despairs of the term "conservative," writing: "We need a word that captures not only conservatism's scruples but also its ethics." Good Order, two words, does this.