Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is the second Maclean book that I have read and this one is very different from her previous one. Unlike her earlier book on the development of the Klan, this book is less academic and instead is sounding the alarm bell on what is in effect the slow transformation of the functioning in the government in this country. What this book does is draw a connection between the disparate parts that anyone who follows politics at all has seen. How do groups like the Libertarian party seem to be so well funded despite the lack of any significant electoral success? How do think tanks like the Cato Institute become so well funded and have such an out spoken voice? This book sheds light on that as well as how it all got started. The book begins in Virginia with the movement to keep school segregated and the transition of the movement from the blatant race based politics to the argument for "choice" in its place. It traces the career of John Buchanan, a conservative economist and his lifelong efforts to spread his movement of public choice and shape American society based on these principles. The key to Buchanan's success and others that think like him was his tireless fundraising and the generous funding that he and others like him received from Charles and David Koch and other wealthy donors who stood to directly benefit from their proposed policies. The book follows Buchanan's career and uses it to explore the inner workings of the far right/ libertarian ideological thought. I thought this book was highly informative and it drew connections between a lot of thing that I had observed in politics but did not know all of the details too. The author does a good job of explaining her argument as well as documenting it. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in politics and the slow motion attack on this country's social safety net.