An informative and up-riling examination of how the Republican party became enmeshed with the Christian right and went bananas. Recommended, although I couldn't really say how objective or balanced it is.

Really interesting look at the religious right and how it's come to occupy its key place in American (especially Republican) politics. This is a topic I've always had an interest in, and this is one of the better overview books about the movement I've found. It's obviously coming from a critical perspective on the movement under discussion (which I share), but it's thorough and not flippant.

Each chapter is organized around key individuals or groups and then flows into the next chapter about individuals and groups who are connected to them. This way of organizing the material really made the links clear, which was one of the big strengths of the book.

I've been a big fan of the political journalism of Max Blumenthal's father, Sidney, for many years, and Max seems to have inherited his father's ability to write about politics in a way that takes ideas seriously and doesn't dumb them down, but is always clear and flows well.

Terrifying book. It basically explains, mostly chronologically, how the religious fundamentalists took over the Republican party. Step by horrifying and preplanned step. I'll probably go buy a copy, because it seems like the ultimate religion-meets-politics right wing style reference. I find it very well organized, and of course a bit biased. I have never considered myself conservative or a republican and yet I have been dismayed at the disappearance of the reasonable, thoughtful people from that side of the conversation. We need people with all kinds of ideas. We have all lost something here.

Having grown up in a household where there were always several Dobson and Colson books on the shelf, I am now unsurprised by much of what I found in this book, chilling though it was to read. As this book ends around the time of the end of President Obama's first term, it is very easy to follow the devolution of the Conservative movement and the GOP from that time to the present. Sadly, these days the popular media outlets don't do the kind of research and journalism required to present a piece like this, so the country at large doesn't hear any of this. And in the rare occasions they do hear it, it comes from a crackpot who mixes facts with nonsensical hyperbole so the truth gets lost.

Now, I more fully understand the Clintons' claim of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that I had always dismissed as just more political fear-mongering. They actually had a point, they were just terrible at articulating it in a way that didn't invite ridicule.

Not anything like an impartial, in-depth look at the Religious Right, but an interesting overview of many of the various players, most of whom have had some financial or, even more often, sexual scandal in their pasts. Blumenthal is flip and snarky and does some amateur psychoanalysis that manages to be over-the-top and yet kinda believable.