Search results for ""author thomas frank""

From the acclaimed author of Listen, Liberal and What’s the Matter with Kansas, a scathing collection of interlocking essays perfect for this political moment. With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, New York Times–bestselling author Thomas Frank takes us on a tour through present-day America, showing us a society in the late stages of disintegration. Holding nothing back, Frank skewers both the right and left, and rages about the systematic inequality that led, in 2016, to millions of anxious, ordinary people rallying to the presidential campaign of a billionaire who meant them no good. For those who despair of the future of America and of reason itself, Rendezvous with Oblivion is a booster shot of energy, reality, and moral outrage.

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With a New Afterword by the AuthorThe New York Times bestseller, praised as hilariously funny . . . the only way to understand why so many Americans have decided to vote against their own economic and political interests -(Molly Ivins)Hailed as dazzlingly insightful and wonderfully sardonic (Chicago Tribune), very funny and very painful (San Francisco Chronicle), and in a different league from most political books (The New York Observer), What''s the Matter with Kansas? unravels the great political mystery of our day: Why do so many Americans vote against their economic and social interests? With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank answers the riddle by examining his home state, Kansas-a place once famous for its radicalism that now ranks among the nation''s most eager participants in the culture wars. Charting what he calls the thirty-year backlash-the popular revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment-F

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An evocative symbol of the 1960s was its youth counterculture. This study reveals that the youthful revolutionaries were augmented by such unlikely allies as the advertising industry and the men's clothing business. The ad industry celebrated irrepressible youth and promoted defiance and revolt. In the 1950s, Madison Avenue deluged the country with images of junior executives, happy housewives and idealized families in tail-finned American cars. But the author of this study seeks to show how, during the "creative revolution" of the 60s, the ad industry turned savagely on the very icons it had created, using brands as signifiers of rule-breaking, defiance, difference and revolt. Even the menswear industry, formerly makers of staid, unchanging garments, ridiculed its own traditions as remnants of intolerable conformity, and discovered youth insurgency as an ideal symbol for its colourful new fashions. Thus emerged the strategy of co-opting dissident style which is so commonplace in modern hip, commercial culture. This text aims to add detail to a period in the 60s which has hitherto remained unresearched.

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Everything we think we know about populism is wrong. Donald Trump. Brexit. European right-wing extremists. All have been accused of populism. But what does this often thrown about, yet generally misunderstood, term actually mean? The real story of populism is an account of enlightenment and liberation; the story of democracy itself, of its promise of a decent life for us all. Here, acclaimed political commentator Thomas Frank takes us from the emergence of the radical left-wing US Populist Party in the 1890s, through the triumphs of reformers under Roosevelt and Truman, to the present day, reminding us how much we owe to the populist ethos. He pummels the elites, revisits the movement’s provocative politics, and declares true populism to be the language of promise and optimism. People Without Power is a ringing affirmation of a movement that, Frank shows us, is not the problem of our times, but the solution.

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