Making Sense of the Alt-Right

I am no fan of the term alt-right, but an academic study of this much-hyped movement was well overdue, and George Hawley was the only one who could make at least some sense of them. Recommended reading!--Cas Mudde, University of Georgia George Hawley's fine new book is one of the first accounts of the rise of a new radical political ideology. It's an important contribution to scholarship about extremism, digital communication, and contemporary American political culture. It's also a good read, packed with interesting anecdotes about right-wing intellectual infighting and the online community of the alt-right. All serious followers of American politics today will want to read it.--Thomas J. Main, Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, CUNY Hawley's survey represents a good early effort at understanding a strange time in American politics.--Publishers Weekly Suddenly, everyone claims to be an expert on the white-nationalist reboot, but Hawley actually is. His deep knowledge makes this the most thorough guide to the movement yet.--New York Magazine WHY READ IT? A good, short (222 pages) primer to help understand the political forces responsible for Charlottesville (and the election of Donald Trump as president).--Hollywood Reporter For anyone trying to figure out how to appeal to the exasperated while maintaining hard boundaries against white supremacists, an important book...--Joan C. Williams Times Literary Supplement Richly deserves to be read.--Counter Currents A slim, neatly focused work that attempts to define the radical new movement.--New Statesman An important contribution to contemporary political discourse that sheds light on a disturbingly influential group in American politics.--Library Journal Valuable accounts of a movement that [the author] has studied in depth.--Inside Higher Ed Vital for understanding our times.--Urban Daddy Making Sense of the Alt-Right is clearly written, insightful, and impressively documented, getting the reader genuinely close to the essence of this amorphous movement. I know of no other work that does nearly as good a job of dealing with the alt-right, and I suspect that this will become the go-to work on the movement for students, politicians, and serious readers alike.--Michael Barkun, Syracuse University Making Sense of the Alt-Right understands alt-right thinking from the inside. George Hawley's erudition on the subject is evident. The work is supple in tracing out the lineage and development of the movement against the conservative establishment and in explaining its present incarnation in the form of the alt-right.--Lawrence Rosenthal, University of California, Berkeley