Book of the Day Roundup: July 1-5, 2024
American Apocalypse
The Six Far-Right Groups Waging War on Democracy
Rena Steinzor
Stanford University Press
Hardcover $32.00 (356pp)
978-1-5036-3459-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Powerful and informative, Rena Steinzor’s American Apocalypse examines the history, motives, and momentum of six powerful groups aligned with the far right: corporations, the Tea Party, the Federalist Society, Fox News, white evangelicals, and militias.
The groups at the center of this inquiry are accused of “waging war” on the US government. Although each group has its own motivations and agenda, they share an alliance with Donald Trump and his “extreme” policies, including a concern about the size and power of the administrative state. While Steinzor notes that there’s no evidence that these groups are colluding, their cumulative impact has the potential to destabilize democracy; taken together, they are “a deconstructive force of awesome power…a constellation of armies fighting along parallel paths.”
The book’s chapter on corporations examines the erosion of regulatory controls, citing as a historical turning point a fiery 1971 memo by Lewis Powell, issued just before he joined the Supreme Court, that claimed “seditious, left-wing forces” had “infiltrated” vital institutions and were undermining free enterprise. The antiregulatory sentiments in that pivotal document were manifested in the Trump administration’s weakening of the government’s environmental and economic regulatory power. Similarly, the discussion of the Tea Party considers how a 2008 grassroots protest of government spending evolved into the Freedom Caucus, an extreme right-wing faction with a disproportionate ability to disrupt the power of Congress.
Steinzor’s discussions of each special interest group are insightful and revealing, and the collective threat they represent is convincingly argued. Perhaps inevitably, the book covers so much territory that it risks oversimplifying its analysis; the proposed election and campaign funding reforms seem inadequate to confront the threats it names.
American Apocalypse is a provocative, startling exposé of the special interest groups working to challenge democracy in an age of political turmoil and division.
KRISTEN RABE (June 10, 2024)
The Supreme Court Footnote
A Surprising History
Peter Charles Hoffer
NYU Press
Hardcover $30.00 (240pp)
978-1-4798-3022-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A startling examination of eight influential Supreme Court cases, The Supreme Court Footnote describes the increasing importance of footnotes in signaling the justices’ thinking and direction.
This astute book covers Peter Charles Hoffer’s close readings of eight historic Supreme Court cases wherein footnotes played an illustrative role, starting with Chisholm v. Georgia in 1793 and ending with the controversial Dobbs v. Jackson case in 2022. The infamous Dred Scott decision, for instance, contained six “apparently innocuous” footnotes that underscored the “irreconcilable conflict between freedom and slavery” prior to the Civil War. And the footnotes in the unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision on school desegregation carried Chief Justice Earl Warren’s momentous assertions that “the historical record was not useful” and “[we] cannot turn back the clock to 1868.”
Hoffer imbues the seemingly arcane topic with drive and urgency. His discussion of District of Columbia v. Heller describes how justices Antonin Scalia and John Paul Stevens used footnotes to spar over the convoluted syntax of the Second Amendment. In Dobbs, Justice Samuel Alito used 117 footnotes to ground his decision in the precedent of history, noting that the reproductive right to abortion did not exist in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. In contrast, dissenting justice Elena Kagan’s thirty-one footnotes attempted to unite precedent with fifty years of history and tradition since Roe v. Wade, emphasizing that “history is ongoing.” She and Justice Alito seemed to occupy “different constitutional planets,” Hoffer writes, adding that Kagan demonstrated “how central [the footnote] had become to judicial writing.” Further, the book includes incisive profiles of key justices and insights into the process and politics behind court decisions.
In a time when many see the Supreme Court as politicized and divisive, The Supreme Court Footnote interprets the intricacies of the court’s decisions with intelligence and vision.
KRISTEN RABE (June 10, 2024)
Disarming Leviathan
Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor
Caleb E. Campbell
InterVarsity Press
Softcover $18.00 (216pp)
978-1-5140-0851-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Evangelical pastor Caleb E. Campbell’s Disarming Leviathan is an earnest text that works to understand the phenomenon of rising Christian nationalism in the United States.
Following the upheavals of 2020 and 2021, including the contentious presidential election and the January 6th insurrection, Campbell came to the troubling realization that a wedge had formed between him and the religious congregation he served. This was the catalyst for his book, which first outlines Christian nationalism’s origins before illustrating a loving approach to diffusing it. Christian nationalism is introduced as an amalgam of religion and politics that warps biblical teachings into an ideological force bent on political power and policy change. But rather than responding with indignation, reprisal, or logical argumentation, Campbell argues that Christians should engage in religious outreach with nationalists to bring them back into the fold.
Exemplifying a compassionate missionary approach, the book is informed by myriad voices and experiences. It recounts conversations with advocates from Christian nationalist groups and reveals the ordinary people who are drawn toward the ideology. It includes a clear sense of the challenges that face people on both sides of the divide. Further, it leads by example: Campbell himself had an apathetic religious childhood and flirted with Neo-Nazism (“I borrowed the tribe’s convictions in order to belong.”) before finding his way to an Evangelical church. Paired with scriptural analyses and rigorous inquiries into Christian nationalism’s appeal, his book is intimate as it explores what it takes to effect such a change of heart.
Charting a path forward in life, politics, and religion, Disarming Leviathan is a compassionate religious text that practices what it preaches, guiding people toward a less divisive future.
WILLEM MARX (June 10, 2024)
54 Miles
Leonard Pitts, Jr.
Agate Bolden
Softcover $19.95 (344pp)
978-1-57284-337-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Family wounds are reopened in Leonard Pitts Jr.’s gripping historical novel 54 Miles, a coming-of-age story set during the civil rights movement.
Adam was raised in New York by his attentive white father and somewhat distant Black mother. When he goes to Alabama, where his parents are from, against their wishes, this singular act forces his family to confront the traumas they sustained in the South. And Adam is unprepared for the experiences he faces: the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery leaves him brutalized and in a state of turmoil when the marchers are attacked and forced to turn back; later, the soldiers sent to protect the marchers seem to resent their task.
Discrimination is detailed with horrifying clarity, from a two-hour-long lynching in which children jostle for body parts as souvenirs to a vicious rape that includes taunting, racist chants. And Adam’s paternal uncle, who disapproves of his brother’s relationship, insists, “God has decreed that on this Earth, there are superior races and inferior races… . By trying to change that, you are messing with God’s design.”
After the march, Adam’s mother returns to Alabama to save him and mend the rift in their relationship. Meanwhile, Luther, Adam’s uncle, is drawn into the widening mess, facing reignited trauma after stumbling onto his parents’ murderer in a rest home while visiting a friend. As Martin Luther King Jr. calls for nonviolent protests, Luther scoffs—but he can’t deny the stirring in his heart as he listens to Dr. King and bears witness to the changing atmosphere. And in time, Adam finds peace in a newfound mission too—and learns to extend grace to his mother.
Hard decisions and sacrifices are made as the struggle for freedom intensifies in the historical novel 54 Miles.
GABRIELLA HARRISON (June 10, 2024)
Rainbow Allies
The True Story of Kids Who Stood against Hate
Nancy Churnin
Izzy Evans, illustrator
Beaming Books
Hardcover $18.99 (40pp)
978-1-5064-8844-8
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Based on a true story, this touching picture book demonstrates that hate can always be overcome by love and community—and suggests some age-appropriate methods for being part of the solution. When a lesbian couple’s home is vandalized, the children of a Massachusetts neighborhood come up with a plan to make the women feel welcome again. The illustrations are colorful yet muted, evoking the lazy quietude of small-town summers; the bright stripes of rainbow flags stand out within them: prominent, defiant, and proud.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (June 10, 2024)
Kathy Young
