In her first book since the widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author Arlie Russell Hochschild now ventures to Appalachia, uncovering the pride paradox that has given the right's appeals such resonance.

A 2024 New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick
A New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2024

For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel stolen?

Hochschild's research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation, where the city was reeling: coal jobs had left, crushing poverty persisted, and a deadly drug crisis struck the region. Although Pikeville was in the political center thirty years ago, by 2016, 80 percent of the district's population voted for Donald Trump. Her brilliant exploration of the town's response to a white nationalist march in 2017 -- a rehearsal for the deadly Unite the Right march that would soon take place in Charlottesville, Virginia -- takes us deep inside a torn and suffering community.

Hochschild focuses on a group swept up in the shifting political landscape: blue-collar men. In small churches, hillside hollers, roadside diners, trailer parks, and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, Hochschild introduces us to unforgettable people, and offers an original lens through which to see them and the wider world. In Stolen Pride, Hochschild incisively explores our dangerous times, even as she also points a way forward.

A piercing . . . impressive and nuanced assessment of a critical factor in American politics. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Today's conservatives know what they're against. They're anti-woke, anti-globalist, anti-big government. But what exactly do they stand for? The fact that this is a hard question to answer is a damning indictment of the modern Republican Party which has abjectly failed to articulate an affirmative alternative to the left's vision. Ramaswamy calls on the conservative movement to articulate exactly what it stands for, or else warns of another illusory red wave in 2024.

Vivek Ramaswamy is not a politician. He is a first generation American, the founder of several successful companies, and a bestselling author. Ramaswamy decided he needed to step in the arena to stop the lies and tell the American people the truth. That's why he ran for president and became a leading voice in the America First movement.

In Truths: The Future of America First, Ramaswamy shows exactly how honesty about the most important issues will get our country back on track. The America First movement emphasizes the issues that bring us together, not what divides us. It asks that we put our country over politics, merit over grievance, and truth over lies. Ramaswamy tells us the truth about our political system, and the people who control it, and exhorts us to exercise our right to self-governance again.

America First is bigger than any man or woman. It's a movement. In Truths, Vivek Ramaswamy explains exactly why that movement needs to succeed now more than ever. Our country's future depends on it.

Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.

American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use

physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are -- the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant.

When Scott Payne was growing up, an '80s kid with a big attitude and a taste for sleeveless shirts, he could never have envisioned where he'd find himself on Halloween night 2019. Having transformed into Pale Horse and infiltrated the nation's most dangerous, fastest-growing white supremacy group, The Base, he was huddled with a cell of neo-Nazis in the backwoods of Georgia as they slaughtered a goat and drank its blood in a ritual sacrifice.

A decorated agent dubbed the Hillbilly Donnie Brasco, Payne takes readers along with him on some of the most terrifying and riskiest assignments in FBI history. He went deep undercover with the lethal Outlaw Motorcycle Club in Massachusetts; to the front lines of the opioid epidemic in Tennessee; and infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Through it all, he stayed married to the love of his life, raised two girls, and spent his Sundays at church, sustained by family and faith.

Timely and unputdownable, Code Name: Pale Horse is a hard look a some of the most pressing threats facing America today. Honest and inspiring, it's the story of a hero determined to take down a hateful army--before the unthinkable could come to pass.

A ripping read--well rendered, fast-paced and delivered with the same punch and assurance that she brings to a broadcast. . . . The parallels to the present day are strong, even startling.--The New York Times (Editors' Choice)

Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens' confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.

That effort worked--tongue and groove--alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.

At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.

None of it went as planned.

While the scheme has been remembered in history--if at all--as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country's most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.

That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The Best and Most Current Primer - The New York Times

Searing and intimate... with masterly, white-hot reporting. - The New York Times

The most important book in this election. - Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC

As Dias and Lerer write, the fight against legal abortion is tied inextricably to the fight for America's soul. - New York Magazine

A tour de force. However you read books, hardcover, ebook, audio... Just read it. - Alex Wagner on Alex Wagner Tonight

From two top New York Times journalists, the searing and intimate untold story of the plan to overturn Roe v. Wade and the consequences for women and abortion, charting the rise of this new America with masterly white hot reporting.

In June 2022, Americans watched in shock as the Supreme Court reversed one of the nation's landmark rulings. For nearly a half century, Roe was synonymous with women's rights and freedoms. Then, suddenly, it was gone.

In their groundbreaking book The Fall of Roe, Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer reveal the explosive inside story of how it happened. Their investigation charts the shocking political and religious campaign to take down abortion rights and remake American families, womanhood, and the nation itself. In doing so, Dias and Lerer go beyond the traditional political narrative into the most personal reaches of American life.

Reeling from Barack Obama's 2012 landslide presidential victory - and motivated by a spiritual mission - a small but determined network of elite conservative Christian lawyers and powerbrokers worked quietly and methodically to keep their true cause alive: ending abortion rights. Thinking in generational terms, they devised a strategic, top-down takeover at every level of political and legal life, from little-known anti-abortion lobbyists in far flung statehouses to the arbiters of the constitution at the highest court in the land. Broad swaths of liberal America did not register the severity of the threat until it was far too late. At a moment when women had more power than ever before, the feminist movement suffered one of the greatest political defeats in American history.

With stunning scope, journalistic rigor, and unprecedented access to the highest echelons of conservative and liberal power, Dias and Lerer chronicle the end of the Roe era. Their deeply human reporting stretches from inside abortion clinics to the halls of the White House, exposing powerful behind-the-scenes actors and recasting the actions of those already in the spotlight. The result is a sweeping and intimate narrative of secrets, power, jaw-dropping revelations, and a guide for affecting long term political change as we look to what's ahead.

A sardonic chronicle of how conservatism turned into a racketeering enterprise - and why Donald Trump became the living emblem of the American right's moral decay.

The Longest Con tells the fascinating story of the partisan con artists who have corrupted conservative politics in our time, creating a toxic phenomenon that culminated in the election of Donald Trump, a bumptious fraud whose checkered career and tawdry retinue, including his presidential cabinet, have featured almost every variety of scam. But long before he appeared, Trump's path to power was blazed by the motley horde of swindlers and quacks who preceded him.

From the professional anti-communists (whose tactics even J. Edgar Hoover despised) to the populist grifters of the Tea Party movement and the religious charlatans of the prosperity gospel (who provided a pious front for Trump), the right-wing ripoff has remained remarkably consistent, even as personalities change and new technologies emerge: Stir up anger and resentment, demonize political opponents, promise vengeance, and collect donations from the gullible. It's a highly lucrative game that any unscrupulous charlatan can play, as many have - and they are named in these pages.

In an unsparing and often comic narrative, Joe Conason explores the right's long, steep descent into a movement whose principal aim is not to protect freedom or defend the Constitution, but merely to line the pockets of pretenders and blowhards whose malevolent tactics now endanger the nation.

Why Liberalism Failed offers cogent insights into the loss of meaning and community that many in the West feel, issues that liberal democracies ignore at their own peril.--President Barack Obama

Deneen's book is valuable because it focuses on today's central issue. The important debates now are not about policy. They are about the basic values and structures of our social order.--David Brooks, New York Times

Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century--fascism, communism, and liberalism--only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism's proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.

Tulsi Gabbard was the rising star of the Democrat Party. But the growing wokeness, fomenting racism, and intolerance were more than she could stomach, and she left. This is her story and a call to action to Americans who love our country and cherish peace and freedom.

Today's Democrat Party is controlled by an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by woke ideology and racializing everything. They are a clear and present threat to the God-given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.

A soldier, former member of Congress, and a former presidential candidate, Tulsi loves her country: I answered the call to serve and swore an oath, dedicating my life to supporting and defending the Constitution, both in uniform and in public office. I have always been an independent-minded person but became a Democrat when I first ran for office because I saw a party that stood up for the little guy, free speech, and civil liberties. That party is no more.

Today that party is unrecognizable: undermining free speech, antagonistic to people of faith, hostile to the police and law and order, suspicious of law-abiding Americans, supporting open borders, and using our national security apparatus to target political opponents.

Now an Independent, Tulsi calls on those who love America to stand up for peace, defend freedom, and protect our democratic republic from those seeking to undermine it at every turn. It's time to leave the Democrat Party behind.

In her new preface, Jane Mayer discusses the results of the most recent election and Donald Trump's victory, and how, despite much discussion to the contrary, this was a huge victory for the billionaires who have been pouring money in the American political system.

Why is America living in an age of profound and widening economic inequality? Why have even modest attempts to address climate change been defeated again and again? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? In a riveting and indelible feat of reporting, Jane Mayer illuminates the history of an elite cadre of plutocrats--headed by the Kochs, the Scaifes, the Olins, and the Bradleys--who have bankrolled a systematic plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. Mayer traces a byzantine trail of billions of dollars spent by the network, revealing a staggering conglomeration of think tanks, academic institutions, media groups, courthouses, and government allies that have fallen under their sphere of influence. Drawing from hundreds of exclusive interviews, as well as extensive scrutiny of public records, private papers, and court proceedings, Mayer provides vivid portraits of the secretive figures behind the new American oligarchy and a searing look at the carefully concealed agendas steering the nation. Dark Money is an essential book for anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
LA Times Book Prize Finalist
PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Finalist
Shortlisted for the Lukas Prize

The quest for social justice is a powerful crusade of our time, with an appeal to many different people, for many different reasons. But those who use the same words do not always present the same meanings. Clarifying those meanings is the first step toward finding out what we agree on and disagree on. From there, it is largely a question of what the facts are. Social Justice Fallacies reveals how many things that are thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed.

However attractive the social justice vision, the crucial question is whether the social justice agenda will get us to the fulfillment of that vision. History shows that the social justice agenda has often led in the opposite direction, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

More things are involved besides simply mistakes. All human beings are fallible, and social justice advocates may not necessarily make any more mistakes than others. But crusaders with an utter certainty about their mission are often undeterred by obstacles, evidence or even fatal dangers. That is where much of the Western world is today. The question is whether we will continue on heedlessly, past the point of no return.

Why was the discourse of family values so pivotal to the conservative and free-market revolution of the 1980s and why has it continued to exert such a profound influence on American political life? Why have free-market neoliberals so often made common cause with social conservatives on the question of family, despite their differences on all other issues?

In this book, Melinda Cooper challenges the idea that neoliberalism privileges atomized individualism over familial solidarities, and contractual freedom over inherited status. Delving into the history of the American poor laws, she shows how the liberal ethos of personal responsibility was always undergirded by a wider imperative of family responsibility and how this investment in kinship obligations recurrently facilitated the working relationship between free-market liberals and social conservatives.

Neoliberalism, she argues, must be understood as an effort to revive and extend the poor law tradition in the contemporary idiom of household debt. As neoliberal policymakers imposed cuts to health, education, and welfare budgets, they simultaneously identified the family as a wholesale alternative to the twentieth-century welfare state. And as the responsibility for deficit spending shifted from the state to the household, the private debt obligations of family were defined as foundational to socio-economic order. Despite their differences, neoliberals and social conservatives were in agreement that the bonds of family needed to be encouraged -- and at the limit enforced -- as a necessary counterpart to market freedom.

In a series of case studies ranging from Clinton's welfare reform to the AIDS epidemic, and from same-sex marriage to the student loan crisis, Cooper explores the key policy contributions made by neoliberal economists and legal theorists. Only by restoring the question of family to its central place in the neoliberal project, she argues, can we make sense of the defining political alliance of our times, that between free-market economics and social conservatism.

Anson Frericks, a former president at Anheuser-Busch--formerly the home of America's most popular brewery--watched as the company unraveled at the hands of globe-trotting financiers and progressive middle management.

Rather than pursue shareholder profits, Anheuser-Busch suddenly became focused on stakeholder capitalism and the vague mandates of environment, social, and governance (ESG). This ill-advised change cumulated in the shocking evaporation of $30 billion in market cap after releasing an advertising campaign starring political activist Dylan Mulvaney.

Now, Anheuser-Busch's evolution and its subsequent fallout is brought to light as never before with this ultimate insider's look. Compelling, candid, and eye-opening, Last Call for Bud Light is the unforgettable story of the downfall and future of an American icon.

A ripping read--well rendered, fast-paced and delivered with the same punch and assurance that she brings to a broadcast. . . . The parallels to the present day are strong, even startling.--The New York Times (Editors' Choice)

Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens' confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.

That effort worked--tongue and groove--alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.

At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.

None of it went as planned.

While the scheme has been remembered in history--if at all--as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country's most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.

That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.

As progressive policies get more extreme--and challenging them becomes more dangerous--the left expects us to submit to the madness.

Leave this to your betters, they tell us, as the left and our bureaucratic state refine the weaponizing of fear, gaslighting us into a new normal of chronic dread and anxiety with one goal in mind: unprecedented government control over our lives.

COVID, climate change, systemic racism, terrorist parents, identity politics, vandalizing language, cancel culture--from vague designer threats to an endless array of arbitrary rules, the left's scam to kill our minds follows a predictable pattern:

- Cut us off from our friends and family

- Gaslight us

- Tell us we misremember the past

- Break down our confidence

- Shame us

- Fill us with a fear of everything

It's time to turn the tables and end this abusive manipulation once and for all. And former liberal activist and Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce shows how. In Fear Itself, you'll see that none of this is normal nor is it organic. And, most important, you'll see that it can be defeated. Overcoming the weaponization of fear first requires recognizing it. Once we're no longer in the dark, defeating it becomes second nature as we take back control of our lives and the destiny of our country.

The most important book on free speech in decades--read it! --SENATOR TED CRUZ

A New Strategy: We Win, They Lose

The Culture War is over, and the culture lost.

The Left's assault on liberty, virtue, decency, the Republic of the Founders, and Western civilization has succeeded.

You can no longer keep your social media account--or your job--and acknowledge truths such as: Washington, Jefferson, and Columbus were great men. Schools and libraries should not coach children in sexual deviance. Men don't have uteruses.

How did we get to this point?

Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire exposes and diagnosis the losing strategy we have fallen for and shows how we can change course--and start winning.

In the groundbreaking Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds Knowles reveals:

• How the free speech absolutists gave away the store
• The First Amendment does not require a value-neutral public square
• How the Communists figured out that their revolution could never succeed as long as the common man was attached to his own culture
• Where political correctness came from
• How, comply or resist, political correctness is a win-win game for the bad guys
• Why taking our stand on freedom of speech helps put atheism, decadence, and nonsense on the same plane with faith, virtue, and reality
• The real question: Will we shut down drag queen story hour, or cancel Abraham Lincoln?
• For 170 years the First Amendment was compatible with prayer in public school
• How the atheists got the Warren Court to rule their way
• To this day, there's a First Amendment exception for obscenity. What exactly is the argument that perverts' teaching toddlers to twerk is not obscene?

The inspiration for the documentary God & Country

For readers of Democracy in Chains and Dark Money, a revelatory investigation of the Religious Right's rise to political power.

For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America's religious nationalists aren't just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy.

Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today's Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America's past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals.

The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart's probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms.

The bestselling author of Theology of Home, Carrie Gress shows that fifty years of radical feminism have solidified the primacy of the traditionally male sphere of life and devalued the attributes, virtues, and strengths of women.

Feminism, the ideology dedicated to smashing the patriarchy, has instead made male lives the norm for everyone. After fifty years of radical feminism, we can't even define woman. In this powerful new book, Carrie Gress says what cannot be said: feminism has abolished women.

Hulking trans women thrash female athletes. Mothers abort their baby girls. Drag queens perform obscene parodies of women. Females are enslaved for men's pleasure--or they enslave themselves. Feminism doesn't avert these tragedies; it encourages them. The carefree binge of self-absorption has left women exploited, unhappy, dependent on the state, and at war with men. And still, feminists cling to their illusions of liberation.

But there are real answers. Real answers for real women. Carrie Gress--a wife, mother, and philosopher--punctures the myth of feminism, exposing its legacy of abuse, abandonment, and anarchy. From the serpent's seduction of Eve to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Kate Millett's lust, violence, and insanity to Meghan Markle's havoc-ridden rise to royalty, Gress presents a history as intriguing as the characters who lived it. The answers women most desperately need, she concludes, are to be found precisely where they are most afraid to look.

Only a rediscovery of true womanhood--and motherhood--can pull our society back from the brink. And happiness is possible only if women are open to making peace with men, with children, with God, and--no less difficult--with themselves. For feminism's victims, Gress is a welcoming voice in the darkness: The door is open. The lights are on. Come home.

With the nation lurching from one crisis to the next, many Americans believe that something fundamental has gone wrong. Why aren't college graduates able to achieve financial security? Why is government completely inept in the face of natural disasters? And why do pundits tell us that the economy is strong even though the majority of Americans can barely make ends meet? In The Quiet Coup, Mehrsa Baradaran, one of our leading public intellectuals, argues that the system is in fact rigged toward the powerful, though it wasn't the work of evil puppet masters behind the curtain. Rather, the rigging was carried out by hundreds of (mostly) law-abiding lawyers, judges, regulators, policy makers, and lobbyists. Adherents of a market-centered doctrine called neoliberalism, these individuals, over the course of decades, worked to transform the nation--and succeeded.

They did so by changing the law in unseen ways. Tracing this largely unknown history from the late 1960s to the present, Baradaran demonstrates that far from yielding fewer laws and regulations, neoliberalism has in fact always meant more--and more complex--laws. Those laws have uniformly benefited the wealthy. From the work of a young Alan Greenspan in creating Black Capitalism, to Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell's efforts to unshackle big money donors, to the establishment of the Law and Economics approach to legal interpretation--in which judges render opinions based on the principles of right-wing economics--Baradaran narrates the key moments in the slow-moving coup that was, and is, neoliberalism. Shifting our focus away from presidents and national policy, she tells the story of how this nation's laws came to favor the few against the many, threatening the integrity of the market and the state.

Some have claimed that the neoliberal era is behind us. Baradaran shows that such thinking is misguided. Neoliberalism is a failed economic idea--it doesn't, in fact, create more wealth or more freedom. But it has been successful nevertheless, by seizing the courts and enabling our age of crypto fraud, financial instability, and accelerating inequality. An original account of the forces that have brought us to this dangerous moment in American history, The Quiet Coup reshapes our understanding of the recent past and lights a path toward a better future.

A Next Big Idea Club Must-Read

What's the recipe for happiness? If you listen to liberal elites or red pill influencers, you'd say it's making money, living for yourself, and staying single without kids--and you'd be wrong. Nothing predicts happiness better than a good marriage.

According to new research by the University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox, our kids and communities--not to mention our civilization as a whole--are much more likely to flourish when the state of our unions is strong. Despite this, record numbers of Americans are not succeeding at getting or staying married.

In this hard-hitting book, Wilcox reveals the anti-family messages and policies coming out of Holly-wood, Washington, the media, academia, and corporate America that have weakened marriage. Along the way, he knocks down a number of myths they've propa-gated. He reveals:

- Both men and women who get and stay married accumulate much greater wealth than people who don't marry.

- Married men and women with families report more meaningful lives, compared with their single and childless peers.

- Couples who take a we-before-me approach to married life--by, for instance, sharing joint checking accounts--are happier and less divorce-prone than couples who do not.

- Couples who forge family-first marriages--characterized by frequent date nights, family fun time, and chores done with the kids--enjoy the happiest marriages.

Wilcox spotlights four groups--Asian American, Conservative, Faithful, and Strivers--who have built strong, stable marriages by defying the me-first mes-sages of our elites in favor of a family-first way of life.

This is a book for anyone who wants to under-stand why, even as fewer men and women tie the knot, America's most fundamental institution matters for our civilization more than ever. And for men and women looking to establish strong, stable, and happy unions for themselves and their children, Get Married reveals the road forward.