A timely, critically important contribution to the history of our present political and constitutional crisis.
Historical study of the resentful figures who helped take over one of the world’s oldest political parties.
Any student of American political culture is aware of the John Birch Society, and few can dismiss the impact of this fringe group on current national politics. Founded in 1958 by Republican Robert Welch, the organization laid the groundwork for Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican Party. From the beginning, Birchers have maintained a witches brew of hyperpatriotism, anti-communist paranoia, religious moralism, racism, antisemitism, violent invective, apocalyptic conspiratorial fantasies, and “raw hate.” In addition to an astute history of the John Birch Society, Dallek, a professor of history and political management and the author of Defenseless Under the Night and The Right Moment, examines its heirs, including Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Buchanan, Alex Jones, the tea party, and, of course, Trump. The author makes an irrefutable case that the JBS “did more than any other conservative entity to propel this extremist takeover” by Trump, et al. While written in the typical uninflected voice of contemporary histories, the book effectively demonstrates how one can “see, in COVID denialism, vaccine disinformation, America First nationalism, school board wars, QAnon plots, and allegations of electoral cheating, a movement from the 1960s, long thought dead, casting its shadow across the United States.” Though the “Birchers were hardly the only movement that helped to radicalize conservatism and the Republican Party,” Dallek credits the JBS with stoking the proliferation of “a host of canny successors that put extremist themes, ideas, and techniques into general circulation.” The author’s freshest discovery is that the Anti-Defamation League skillfully succeeded in infiltrating the JBS as “part of a sprawling, informal coalition seeking to discredit the Birchers”—even if it failed to eliminate the poison that continues to infect the GOP.
A timely, critically important contribution to the history of our present political and constitutional crisis.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781541673564
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
