Full name: What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

Author: Thomas Frank Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Purchase/reserch links: Amazon eBooks.com LibraryThing Goodreads ISBNs: 9780805077742 080507774X

One of "our most insightful social observers"* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the "thirty-year backlash"-the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party's success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers. In asking "what 's the matter with Kansas?"-how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union-Frank, a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where's the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism-the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat-and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders' "values" and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy. A brilliant analysis-and funny to boot-What's the Matter with Kansas? presents a critical assessment of who we are, while telling a remarkable story of how a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs came to convince a nation that they spoke on behalf of the People. *Los Angeles Times Similar books: Liberty and Tyranny by Mark R. Levin The Party Is Over by Mike Lofgren Our Divided Political Heart by E. J. Dionne Jr. Rogue States by Noam Chomsky How to Overthrow the Government by Arianna Huffington Crashing the Party by Ralph Nader What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer Conservative Victory by Sean Hannity See, I Told You So by Rush Limbaugh Doctrines and Visions by Noam Chomsky Righteous Indignation by Andrew Breitbart Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America by Bernard Goldberg Banana Republicans by Sheldon Rampton Who's Looking Out for You? by Bill O'Reilly