The southern tradition

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William C. Berman

In America's Right Turn, historian William Berman examines the political, cultural, and economic context in which Republican conservatives operated over the past several decades and explores the crisis of the liberal welfare state against the background of presidential politics from Nixon to Clinton. Berman demonstrates the key roles played by conservative populism and by the conservative backlash to the rights revolution in the collapse of Democratic hegemony. But, most importantly, he shows how conservative politics became allied with conservative economics - an alliance forged with singular success during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

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William B. Hixson, Jr

This book is a creative synthesis of the published scholarly research on the contemporary American right wing from the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy to the election of Ronald Reagan as President. Unlike most other syntheses, it directly engages that research by critically analyzing the major explanations emerging from it. Emphasizing neither the lives and backgrounds of the scholars that he discusses nor paradigms within the social sciences as a whole, William Hixson focuses on the way the concepts of individual researchers have interacted with accumulating evidence on the American right, and how this evidence has led to new and more comprehensive theories. Hixson first summarizes and evaluates the research on the major developments analyzed by scholars - the social sources of "McCarthyism," the "radical right" of the early 1960s, George Wallace's constituency in his Presidential campaigns, and the emerging "new right" of the late 1970s. He then compares the interpretations of the two most influential students of the right wing, Seymour Martin Lipset and Michael Paul Rogin. Finally, he offers his own explanations, suggesting that the right wing is both a mass and elite phenomenon, that its durability comes from its appeal to the upwardly mobile, especially in economically expanding regions, and that far from being either "traditionalist" or reactive, it represents a proactive defense of values associated with late nineteenth-century "modernization."

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Keith Olbermann

Every weeknight on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, with his particular wit and style, Olbermann skewers politicians, celebrities, and people behaving badly. This book starts right after President Obama's election and collects all of Olbermann's acclaimed "Special Comments," a few of his "Quick Comments," all but one of his feature "WTF," selections of "Bushed" and "Still Bushed," and, of course, a healthy dose of "The Worst Person in the World." Covers everything from gay marriage to Sarah Palin, John Edwards' love child, and the Bush legacy--plus Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and, of course, Bill-O.--From publisher description.

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Pamela G. Price

In a cultural history which considers the transformation of south Indian institutions under British colonial rule in the nineteenth century, Pamela Price focuses on the two former 'little kingdoms' of Ramnad and Sivagangai which came under colonial governance as revenue estates. She demonstrates how rivalries among the royal families and major zamindari temples, and the disintegration of indigenous institutions of rule, contributed to the development of nationalist ideologies and new political identities among the people of southern Tamil country. The author also shows how religious symbols and practices going back to the seventeenth century were reformulated and acquired a new significance in the colonial context. Arguing for a reappraisal of the relationship of Hinduism to politics, Price finds that these symbols and practices continue to inform popular expectation of political leadership today.