Book description
Together for the first time: two masterworks on the undercurrents of the American mind by one of our greatest historians
Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and The Paranoid Style in American Politics are two essential works that lay bare the worrying trends of irrationalism, demagoguery, destructive populism, and conspiratorialā¦
Why read it?
1 author picked Richard Hofstadter as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Reading Hofstadterās essays can be an eerie experience. Yes, he was writing in the early 1960s, and often about historical phenomena (although the recent antics and influence of Senator McCarthy were clearly at the front of his mind). But many of his observations about status anxiety and conspiracy theories feel spookily relevant today. With typical eloquence, Hofstadter wrote that McCarthy was buoyed by Americans who were revolting against the ātormenting manifestations of our modern predicamentā; I saw something similar in fascist sympathizers in the interwar years. This edition contains both of Hofstadterās famous essays on āanti-intellectualismā and āthe paranoid style,āā¦
From Katy's list on the history of extremism in the United States.
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