By: Kevin Phillips
Kevin Phillips, former Republican strategist and bestselling author of American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy, provides a critical and extensively researched analysis of the current political condition as shaped by the "Republican Majority". Phillips identifies the role of oil in American foreign policy, the intrusion of radical Christianity into politics, and the explosion of debt, and links them in a frightening vision of the future of America and the world.
American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century By Kevin Phillips
Published by Viking, the Penguin Group (USA), Viking / Hardcover / 462 pages /
ISBN: 067003486X
U.S. $26.95 Canada $38.00
Available March 21, 2006
(Purchase: Amazon.com / Barnes & Noble.com / Booksense.com)
Praise For American Dynasty
The New York Times writes:
"What makes this book powerful in spite of the familiarity of many of its arguments is (Phillips') rare gift for looking broadly and structurally at social and political change ... Phillips has created a harrowing picture of national danger that no American reader will welcome, but that none should ignore."
"Devastating . . . an important, troubling book that should be read everywhere with care, nowhere more so than in this city."
-Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World
"(Phillips) is a deep thinker extraordinaire, who does a masterful job of connecting the military-industrial dots. . . . A searing indictment of the Bush Dynasty."
-Douglas Brinkley, Mother Jones
Description
From America's premier political analyst, an explosive examination of the axis of religion, politics, and borrowed money that threatens to destroy the nation
In his two most recent New York Times bestselling books, American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips established himself as a powerful critic of the political and economic forces that rule-and imperil-the United States, tracing the ever more alarming path of the emerging Republican majority's rise to power. Now, Phillips takes an uncompromising view of the newest stage of the GOP majority: an inept and weakly led coalition, dominated by religious zealotry, that is losing America the world's respect-and endangering her future.
From Ancient Rome to the British Empire, Phillips demonstrates that every world-dominating power has been brought down by an overlapping set of problems: a foolish combination of global overreach, militant religion, diminishing resources, and ballooning debt. It is exactly this nexus of ills that has come to define American's political and economic identity at the start of this century. Matching his command of history with a penetrating analysis of contemporary politics, Phillips surveys a century of foreign policy and wars in the Middle East, showing how all, to one degree or another, reflected our ever-growing preoccupation with oil. Today, that dangerous inheritance includes clumsy military miscalculations, the ruinous occupation of Iraq, and sky-high oil prices.
He then turns to the surge of fundamentalist and evangelical religion in the United States, outlining the way a long tradition of radical and sectarian religion has taken an unprecedented political role under George W. Bush, as more and more Republicans think in apocalyptic terms and seek to shape domestic and foreign policy around religion. Finally, he documents how Wall Street and the business interests so closely allied with Washington have discarded the principles of sound finance that once characterized Republican fiscal policy and have literally mortgaged the country's economic health to financial speculation, accompanied by an unprecedented level of public and private debt.
Oil, religion, and finance are not new elements in U.S. politics, but as Phillips makes clear with his formidable command of fact, figure, and history, and his long experience as a political strategist and observer, we are now in new and dangerous territory. The Bush coalition has resulted in a dearth of candor and serious strategy-a paralysis of policy and a government unable to govern. If left unchecked-the same forces will bring a preacher-ridden, debt-bloated, energy-crippled America to its knees. With an eye on the past and a searing vision of the future, Phillips confirms what too many Americans are still unwilling to admit about the depth of our misgovernment.
About the Author
Kevin Phillips, a former Republican strategist, has been a political and economic commentator for more than three decades. He writes for the Los Angeles Times as well as Harper's Magazine and Time. His thirteen books include the New York Times bestsellers American Dynasty, The Politics of Rich and Poor and Wealth and Democracy.
