A cleareyed, compelling study of the road to Jan. 6 and the possible future of the politics-versus-religion battle in the...
A former White Christian nationalist destroys “the myth of the White Christian nation,” which “provided the basis for our polarized public square…and the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries.”
As a teenager in the mid-1990s, Onishi, a religion scholar and host of the Straight White American Jesus podcast, became deeply involved in a White evangelical church in Orange County, California. As a convert and then minister, he was entrenched in what he calls the foundational traits of White Christian nationalism, which he recognized in the rhetoric of the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters: “the myth of the Christian nation, nostalgia for past glory, and an apocalyptic view of the nation’s future.” In a pertinent, accessible combination of historical survey and memoir, Onishi looks at specific court cases that helped galvanize the White nationalist movement in the 1960s in reaction to the rise of the civil rights and feminist movements, especially Engel v. Vitale (1962), which “concerned the constitutionality of school prayer in public school settings where students were required to participate”; and Abingdon v. Schemp (1963), which “considered the matter of required Bible reading in schools.” Both were denounced by evangelicals as the moment “God was taken out of public schools.” Along with other forces such as desegregation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, these cases helped propel Barry Goldwater’s hard-right candidacy. Onishi shows how the movement gained political might thanks to Paul Weyrich, “one of Goldwater’s foot soldiers,” and how the religious right combined with the GOP to frame the argument as an attack on family values and religious freedom. The election of Ronald Reagan and defeat of Jimmy Carter, “the wrong kind of Christian,” helped perpetuate the warlike, conspiratorial language of the movement, to which Donald Trump neatly subscribed a few decades later. Onishi’s systematic, well-argued narrative reveals the “nostalgia politics” behind the shrinking privilege of White nationalists.
A cleareyed, compelling study of the road to Jan. 6 and the possible future of the politics-versus-religion battle in the U.S.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5064-8216-3
Page Count: 237
Publisher: Broadleaf Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
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 Yorker staff 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
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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