Category Archives: Books
The Enchantments of Trumpism
Eugene McCarraher is Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova University. His book, The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity, argues that capitalist imperatives have superseded those of Christianity over time. The following was presented as part … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Christianity, Politics
Tagged Capitalism, Christianity, Trump
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Paradise & Pragmatism
Chris Jennings is an historian and writer living in Northern California. His book, Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism, documents the experiences of five distinct and but related attempts at American communism around the middle of the nineteenth century. … Continue reading
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Beach Reads!
End Time and Time Again
Dorian Lynskey is the author of 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs from Billie Holiday to Green Day and The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984. His latest, Everything Must Go: The Stories We … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books
Tagged Apocalypse, Climate Change, End Times
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Evangelical Narratives / Exvangelical Memoirs
The success of evangelical youth culture in the 1990s has yielded a soul-searching generation of disillusioned exvangelicals in the first decades of the 21st century. Some of these have written books about their experience, and this paper examines the ways … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Christianity, Culture War, Politics
Tagged Evangelical, Exvangelical, Narratives
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Started on the Margin Now We’re Here
Matthew Dallek is Professor of Political Management at George Washington University. In his most recent book, he identifies the John Birch Society as the vanguard of an insurgent right-wing extremism in American politics. Known for their early embrace of conspiracy … Continue reading
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Tagged Birchers, Trump, Veterans
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Nostalgia for a Tragic Past
Steven Hahn is Professor of History at New York University. His previous books, The Roots of Southern Populism, A Nation Under Our Feet, and A Nation Without Borders, have won many prestigious awards. In his latest, Hahn shows how American … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Politics
Tagged Caste, Donald Trump, Illiberalism
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The Sexual Revelation
Benjamin E. Park is Associate Professor of History at Sam Houston State University. His books, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier and American Zion, provide a comprehensive view of Mormonism from … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Christianity, Politics
Tagged Mormonism, Oneida, Polygamy
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Recommended Reading – An Emersonian Summer
Perhaps the foremost philosophical and literary figure in all of American history, Ralph Waldo Emerson is a challenging and sometimes mystifying writer. The books on this list are arranged in hope of making his life and work more accessible, and … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Philosophy, Politics, Reading
Tagged Emerson, Transcendentalism, Unitarianism
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A Recession of Charisma
David A. Bell is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions at Princeton University. His book, Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution, documents the political influence of military … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Philosophy, Politics
Tagged Charisma, Leadership, Revolutions
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Recommended Reading – Regarding Henry Thoreau
A somewhat controversial figure in his own day, Henry David Thoreau rose to his greatest prominence posthumously, in the late nineteenth century, with the publication of his expansive journals. In our day, he remains ranked among the nation’s most interesting … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Philosophy
Tagged Climate Change, Thoreau, Walden
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“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”
Conservatives or Radicals or Something Else Entirely
Nicole Hemmer is Associate Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. She and I discussed her first book back in 2016. Her second book, Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s, resituates the Republican Party’s sharp rightward … Continue reading
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Politics
Tagged GOP, Nicole Hemmer, Partisans
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Recommended Reading 