What's the Matter With America? : The Resistable Rise of the American Right - Softcover

Frank, Thomas

3.85

12,415 ratings by Goodreads

9780436205392: What's the Matter With America? : The Resistable Rise of the American Right

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0436205394 ISBN 13: 9780436205392

Publisher: Vintage Uk, 2004

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With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank here turns his eye on what he calls the 'thirty-year backlash' - the common man's revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. He charts the Republican party's success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between bluecollar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests; between workers and bosses; between populists and right-wingers. Taking the state of Kansas as a paradigm, Frank describes how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union and, writing as a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: why do so many of us vote against our economic and social interests? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? Frank reveals the true story, showing how voters have been persuaded to elevate 'values' and down-home qualities - lavishly attributed to the current occupant of the White House - above hard questions of policy. A brilliant analysis, and funny to boot, What's the Matter with America? - published in advance of the US Presidential elections - presents a critical assessment of the state of America today, while telling

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About the Author:

Founding editor of The Baffler, Thomas Frank is the author of One Market Under God and The Conquest of Cool. A contributor to Harper's, The Nation, and The New York Times op-ed pages, he lives in Chicago.

Review:

'THOMAS FRANK, NOT MICHAEL MOORE, IS THE MOST INCISIVE WRITER ON CONTEMPORARY AMERICA His writing is so dazzling and witty and scornful it can stand comparison with the works of Twain or Mencken... Frank is in a different league from Michael Moore. He is a smarter and better writer. - Observer. 'Eloquent and often funny' - The Times. 'Important and fascinating...Frank [writes] vividly and with great insight' - London Review of Books. 'Brilliant' - Guardian

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