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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
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| 33607001724825 | Adult Nonfiction | 978.1 FRANK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
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 themby 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
Author Notes
Thomas Frank is the author of Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, What's the Matter with Kansas, One Market Under God and others.
Frank is a former opinion columnist for The Wall Street Journal and is the founding editor of The Baffler and a monthly columnist for Harper's.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Library Journal Review
Native Kansan Frank asks why his state, once famously radical, went the way of the entire country and turned Right. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
From What's the Matter with Kansas? :Hard times, instead of snapping people back to reality, only seem to stoke the fires of the conservative backlash. Indeed, those segments of the working class that have been hardest hit by the big economic changes of recent years are the very ones that vote Republican in the greatest numbers. We seem to have but one way to express our anger, and that's by raging along with Rush--against liberal bias in academia, liberal softness on terrorism, liberal permissiveness, and so on. Our reaction to hard times is thus to hand over ever more power to the people who make them hard. In fact, the election of 2002 provided a perverse incentive to the men who gave us the dot-com bubble and the Enron fiasco: Keep at it. The more you screw the public over, the more they will clamor to cut your taxes. The more you cheat and steal, the angrier they will become--at the liberal media that expose your cheating and stealing. Excerpted from What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.