Book Author Podcast – Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump by Sarah Posner
12/09/20 • 46 min
Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump by Sarah Posner
“In terrifying detail, Unholy illustrates how a vast network of white Christian nationalists plotted the authoritarian takeover of the American democratic system. For anyone wondering what a second Trump administration might bring, there is no more timely book than this one.”—Janet Reitman, author of Inside Scientology
Why did so many evangelicals turn out to vote for Donald Trump, a serial philanderer with questionable conservative credentials who seems to defy Christian values with his every utterance? To a reporter like Sarah Posner, who has been covering the religious right for decades, the answer turns out to be far more intuitive than one might think.
In this taut inquiry, Posner digs deep into the radical history of the religious right to reveal how issues of race and xenophobia have always been at the movement’s core, and how religion often cloaked anxieties about perceived threats to a white, Christian America. Fueled by an antidemocratic impulse, and united by this narrative of reverse victimization, the religious right and the alt-right support a common agenda–and are actively using the erosion of democratic norms to roll back civil rights advances, stock the judiciary with hard-right judges, defang and deregulate federal agencies, and undermine the credibility of the free press. Increasingly, this formidable bloc is also forging ties with European far right groups, giving momentum to a truly global movement.
Revelatory and engrossing, Unholy offers a deeper understanding of the ideological underpinnings and forces influencing the course of Republican politics. This is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.
Reporting Fellow with Type Investigations. My investigative reporting and analysis on the religious right in Republican politics has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New Republic, Vice, HuffPost, The Nation, Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, Talking Points Memo, and many other publications.
The post Book Author Podcast – Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump by Sarah Posner appeared first on Book Author Podcast.
Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump by Sarah Posner
“In terrifying detail, Unholy illustrates how a vast network of white Christian nationalists plotted the authoritarian takeover of the American democratic system. For anyone wondering what a second Trump administration might bring, there is no more timely book than this one.”—Janet Reitman, author of Inside Scientology
Why did so many evangelicals turn out to vote for Donald Trump, a serial philanderer with questionable conservative credentials who seems to defy Christian values with his every utterance? To a reporter like Sarah Posner, who has been covering the religious right for decades, the answer turns out to be far more intuitive than one might think.
In this taut inquiry, Posner digs deep into the radical history of the religious right to reveal how issues of race and xenophobia have always been at the movement’s core, and how religion often cloaked anxieties about perceived threats to a white, Christian America. Fueled by an antidemocratic impulse, and united by this narrative of reverse victimization, the religious right and the alt-right support a common agenda–and are actively using the erosion of democratic norms to roll back civil rights advances, stock the judiciary with hard-right judges, defang and deregulate federal agencies, and undermine the credibility of the free press. Increasingly, this formidable bloc is also forging ties with European far right groups, giving momentum to a truly global movement.
Revelatory and engrossing, Unholy offers a deeper understanding of the ideological underpinnings and forces influencing the course of Republican politics. This is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.
Reporting Fellow with Type Investigations. My investigative reporting and analysis on the religious right in Republican politics has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New Republic, Vice, HuffPost, The Nation, Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, Talking Points Memo, and many other publications.
The post Book Author Podcast – Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump by Sarah Posner appeared first on Book Author Podcast.
Previous Episode
Book Author Podcast – The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy by Victoria De Grazia
The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy by Victoria De Grazia
“As Fellini did in film, The Perfect Fascist takes us into the dark and complicated heart of Italian fascism...It is an extraordinary story that illuminates the ways in which the all-consuming nature of fascism distorted Italian society and destroyed the lives of individuals. I could not put it down.”
―Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919
“With lyrical precision, The Perfect Fascist reveals how ideology corrupts the truth, how untrammeled ambition destroys the soul, and how the vanity of white male supremacy distorts emotion, making even love a matter of state.”
―Sonia Purnell, author of A Woman of No Importance
Through the story of one exemplary fascist―a war hero turned commander of Mussolini’s Black Shirts―the award-winning author of How Fascism Ruled Women reveals how the personal became political in the fascist quest for manhood and power.
When Attilio Teruzzi, Mussolini’s handsome political enforcer, married a rising young American opera star, his good fortune seemed settled. The wedding was a carefully stage-managed affair, capped with a blessing by Mussolini himself. Yet only three years later, after being promoted to commander of the Black Shirts, Teruzzi renounced his wife. In fascist Italy, a Catholic country with no divorce law, he could only dissolve the marriage by filing for an annulment through the medieval procedures of the Church Court. The proceedings took an ominous turn when Mussolini joined Hitler: Lilliana Teruzzi was Jewish, and fascist Italy would soon introduce its first race laws.
The Perfect Fascist pivots from the intimate story of a tempestuous seduction and inconvenient marriage―brilliantly reconstructed through family letters and court records―to a riveting account of Mussolini’s rise and fall. It invites us to see in the vain, loyal, lecherous, and impetuous Attilio Teruzzi, a decorated military officer, an exemplar of fascism’s New Man. Why did he abruptly discard the woman he had so eagerly courted? And why, when the time came to find another partner, did he choose another Jewish woman as his would-be wife? In Victoria de Grazia’s engrossing account, we see him vacillating between the will of his Duce and the dictates of his heart.
De Grazia’s landmark history captures the seductive appeal of fascism and shows us how, in his moral pieties and intimate betrayals, his violence and opportunism, Teruzzi is a forefather of the illiberal politicians of today.
The post Book Author Podcast – The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy by Victoria De Grazia appeared first on Book Author Podcast.
Next Episode
Book Author Podcast – Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls by Jax Miller
Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls by Jax Miller
On December 30, 1999, in rural Oklahoma, sixteen-year-old Ashley Freeman and her best friend, Lauria Bible, were having a sleepover. The next morning, the Freeman family trailer was in flames and both girls were missing.
While rumors of drug debts, revenge, and police corruption abounded in the years that followed, the case remained unsolved and the girls were never found.
In 2015, crime writer Jax Miller–who had been haunted by the case–decided to travel to Oklahoma to find out what really happened on that winter night in 1999, and why the story was still simmering more than fifteen years later. What she found was more than she could have ever bargained for: evidence of jaw-dropping levels of police negligence, entire communities ravaged by methamphetamine addiction, and a series of interconnected murders with an ominously familiar pattern.
These forgotten towns were wild, lawless, and home to some very dark secrets.
About Jax Miller
Jax Miller is an American author. She wrote her first novel, Freedom’s Child, in her twenties while hitchhiking across America, winning the 2016 Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle and earning several CWA Dagger nominations. She has received acclaim from the New York Times, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, and many more. She now works in the true-crime genre, having penned her much-anticipated book and acting as creator, host, and executive producer on the true-crime documentary series Hell in the Heartland on CNN’s HLN network. Jax is a lover of film and music, and has a passion for writing screenplays and rock ‘n’ roll.
The post Book Author Podcast – Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls by Jax Miller appeared first on Book Author Podcast.
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