Publishers Weekly
10/03/2022
Corn (Russian Roulette), the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for Mother Jones, documents in this colorful and persuasive treatise “the Republican Party’s decades-long relationship with extremism.” After sketching the party’s abolitionist origins, Corn details the rise of McCarthyism and President Dwight Eisenhower’s decision—out of fear it would cost him votes—to omit from a 1952 speech a paragraph defending Marshall Plan architect George C. Marshall from McCarthy’s attacks. Subsequent Republican presidents similarly sacrificed principle for political expediency, Corn argues, including Ronald Reagan, “an amiable vessel for a message of fear” who refused to repudiate the ultraconservative John Birch Society; George H.W. Bush, who “flirted with racism and nativism” during the 1988 presidential campaign; and his son George W. Bush, who responded to John McCain’s victory in the 2000 New Hampshire primary by speaking at Bob Jones University, “the citadel of extremist fundamentalism,” in order to attract the evangelical Christian vote. Throughout, Corn draws incisive profiles of Stuart Spencer, Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, and other Republican operatives who “encouraged and cashed in on extremist paranoia, bigotry, and conspiracy theory,” and draws a clear through line from the rise of Barry Goldwater to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Though it covers familiar ground, this incisive political history persuades. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
David Corn’s AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS is essential reading for anyone hoping to restore political sanity in America. He argues convincingly that the toxic brew of bigotry, conspiracy theories, and lies that define Trumpism started long before Trump. Corn chronicles the Republican Party’s decades-long slide into the gutter and weaves this investigative history into a compelling narrative that is equal parts horrifying and entertaining. Corn has managed to make brilliant sense of American senselessness.”—Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money
“In this searing and deeply reported work, Corn recounts how the modern GOP succumbed to the extremism, alternative realities, and paranoia that spread the ‘American psychosis’ that exploded on January 6. A desperately important read.”—Charlie Sykes, author of How The Right Lost Its Mind
“David Corn makes the powerful case that Donald Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. He expertly traces the antecedents of Trump and Trumpism over the decades. This is a must-read if you want to understand what brought us to Trump and why the GOP remains a threat to American democracy.”—Jennifer Rubin, columnist, the Washington Post
“AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS requires us to revisit the dark forces that have shaped our government and charges us to safeguard American democracy from those who inflame our worst instincts to destroy it.”—Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history, Boston College
“The hatred, bigotry, conspiracism, paranoia, and rage inside the GOP didn’t start with Donald Trump. In this important and convincing account, David Corn shows that such poison has been in the marrow of the Republican Party for more than seventy years.”—Jonathan Alter, author of The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies
"AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS is a brave and important book, written by one of the sharpest political writers of our time."—Molly Jong-Fast, contributing writer, The Atlantic
"The genesis from a conventional party to a fanatic cult did not start with Donald Trump. The roots go much deeper and much further back. David Corn, with rich detail and in compelling prose, gives us a full history of the journey to crazy. Whether you have read a lot about the Republican Party or are just beginning to examine how the country could have come to this deeply dangerous point, AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS is a must read."—Norman Ornstein, Emeritus Scholar, The American Enterprise Institute
"David Corn was at the forefront of journalism in detailing the corruption and danger of the Trump campaign and the Trump Presidency. Now, he has taken a highly useful long look back at the far right's role in Republican politics over the decades. Trump and Trumpism did not come from nowhere. There is a long back story. Corn tells it here, bringing to history the verve and energy he brings to all of his reporting."—E. J. Dionne Jr., author, Why the Right Went Wrong
"The veteran political journalist connects the authoritarianism and White supremacism of yore with the Trumpism of today... It’s a zigzag line indeed, but Corn makes important connections. ...A sobering look at the ideological destruction, born of cynicism and opportunism, of a once-principled party.”—Kirkus Reviews
"David Corn’s new book chronicles how Republicans themselves made the MAGA Monster that now devours their party. Every modern Republican, Trump supporter or not, has been complicit in this nightmare"—Elie Mystal, correspondent, The Nation
"[Corn is] a great journalist. I love the way he thinks. I love the way he writes. I'm so glad he's done a super-readable, modern history of the right...We just need smart, digestible history about this stuff right now...[AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS] is perfectly timed...Relevant history for where we are right now."—Rachel Maddow, host, The Rachel Maddow Show
"With AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS, David Corn 'did the full homework to take us all the way back to where it really begins.'"—Lawrence O'Donnell, host, The Last Word
"David Corn “documents in this colorful and persuasive treatise ‘the Republican Party’s decades-long relationship with extremism.’…[Corn] draws a clear through line from the rise of Barry Goldwater to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot….[I]ncisive political history.”—Publisher's Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
2022-09-06
The veteran political journalist connects the authoritarianism and White supremacism of yore with the Trumpism of today.
At the 1964 Republican National Convention, liberal Republicans tried to introduce a resolution to condemn the extremism of the John Birch Society and Ku Klux Klan and were shouted down by supporters of Barry Goldwater, who said that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Corn’s vivid narrative starts there, but it goes back much further, to the anti-immigrant Know-Nothingism of the 1850s, where the author locates the beginnings of a recurrent theme: Just as Abraham Lincoln could not disavow the nationalists because he needed their vote, Richard Nixon had to ally with racist Southerners, and George W. Bush had to pal around with Christian fundamentalists to win the 2000 primary against a more principled John McCain. In turn, McCain turned to Sarah Palin to placate far-right, tea party supporters, a group that morphed into the Trumpists of today. It’s a zigzag line indeed, but Corn makes important connections. “Nixon attained the presidency by exploiting the paramount divisive force in American society—racism—and the sense of fear and dread spreading through much of the nation,” he writes, and substituting Trump for Nixon makes that sentence scan without a hitch. Much of the “psychosis” of recent years has hinged on a long pattern of lies. While the author makes clear that Trump is master of the form, he had plenty of predecessors, from Joseph McCarthy to Palin’s winking insinuations that Barack Obama was a Muslim, the latter yielding what Corn calls Palinism, “a combination of smear politics, conspiracism, and know-nothingism.” Since then, it’s only gotten worse. “Formed 168 years earlier to save the nation from the expansion of slavery,” writes the author, “the Republican Party, now infected with a political madness, [is] a threat to the republic.”
A sobering look at the ideological destruction, born of cynicism and opportunism, of a once-principled party.
