Furious Minds

“A Financial Times Best Book of the Year”“Winner of the PROSE Award in Government and Politics, Association of American Publishers””[An] excellent new book.”—Michelle Goldberg, New York Times“Fascinating and important… . Field is an excellent and intellectually honest guide… . Furious Minds includes some surprisingly witty and playful moments, which stand in stark contrast to the turgid moralizing and hostility she examines in the book.”—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times“In the ever-growing field of books aiming to explain the rise of the MAGA movement, Furious Minds, by a political theorist with longstanding experience in conservative academia, stands out for its emphasis on ideas. Field shows how the New Right, drawing on a loose network of academics and influencers, has coalesced around a vision of America that is socially reactionary, economically isolationist and deeply skeptical of pluralism as an inherent social good.” * New York Times *“A fascinating taxonomy of the wild world of far-right thinking.”—Zack Beauchamp, Vox’s The Gray Area”[Laura K. Field’s] background perfectly positions her to deliver this lively, devastating taxonomy and critique of MAGA’s ideologues. She was originally trained in Straussian scholarship—a reading of classical political thought that criticizes the modern turn away from the sources of moral authority toward liberalism and, in Strauss’s view, nihilism. His approach has had a deep influence on leading conservative American intellectuals of the past half century… . Nearly a decade in these academic circles makes Field a knowledgeable guide to a subject she takes seriously. She’s also a Canadian woman, a double identity that puts her at a skeptical distance from the more and more extreme world of the American right.”—George Packer, The Atlantic“What should we make of the intellectual aspect of MAGA? Beginning in 2016, Laura K. Field writes, in Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, a group of ‘PhDs and intellectuals’—’almost all men’—began coalescing around ideas that they attributed to, associated with, or smuggled inside Trump’s nascent movement… . [Field] was once a conservative, and has a lot of sympathy for various conservative viewpoints… . [But] unnerved by what she perceived as a newly supercharged misogyny among conservative intellectuals—in her view, they are ‘obsessed with masculinity’ in a way their predecessors were not—Field watched as they grew suddenly more radical.”—Joshua Rothman, New Yorker“Furious Minds is the most up-to-date introduction we have to the MAGA intellectual right reshaping America with astonishing speed today.”—Mark Lilla, New York Review of Books“

A great new book about the intellectual roots of MAGA.

”—Greg Sargent, New Republic“Furious Minds is the closest thing we have to a mole’s-eye view of the New Right, and it is revelatory.”—Alexandre Lefebvre, Los Angeles Review of Books“Field has especially rich insights… . [A]n indispensable starting point for anyone who hopes to go beyond a superficial understanding of the anti-liberal American right.”—Stephanie Slade, Reason“Fascinating… . This is a very troubling moment for American democracy, such as it is, and the path forward is unclear to many of us. Furious Minds may help by showing readers, in stark detail, the obscure path that led us to where we are. It’s a work of intellectual history, not a polemic, but it offers an important warning to those with ears to hear: the anger and resentment driving our current agonies can end in only one place.”—Matt McManus, Commonweal“Furious Minds is an outstanding intellectual history of the present.”—Kenan Malik, Observer”[An] unexpected page-turner… . Furious Minds is an unparalleled intellectual history of the present. Field’s research, range, and intimacy with her subjects yields many important insights and discoveries, from the serious to the ridiculous.”—Orlando Reade, Jacobin”[Laura K. Field] might be described as a latter-day Athena soothing today’s Furies to rescue American democracy… . Readers will benefit from the best researched and most comprehensive account of the New Right that has appeared—or is likely to.”—William Galston, The UnPopulist“In Furious Minds, Laura K. Field offers a sharp examination of the intellectual and cultural roots of the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement that has coalesced around Trump’s two administrations. She pairs her analysis with a moving, sometimes outright infuriating, personal account of navigating male-dominated far-right spaces as a female thinker.”—Jan-Werner Mueller, Project Syndicate“A perceptive history and analysis, bolstered by the author’s proximity to the subject… . a valuable guide to understanding that ideology and countering it.”—Kenneth Silber, Splice Today“A meticulous and unsettling revelation of a right-wing plan for a ‘new old-fashioned world.’” * Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) *“A meticulous, nuanced study of the patchwork of the US’s far right.”—Jeff Fleischer, Foreword (Starred review)“A revelatory, at times horrifying deconstruction of the New Right; it shows how we arrived at this moment, and it discusses the intentions of those who hope to push it further. Understanding their intellectual underpinnings is crucial to organizing an effective response… . We recommend her book for the essential knowledge it contains—and for its important advice.”—Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword“Remarkable… . Readers of Furious Minds will congratulate Field on a fluently written book, and thank her for immersing herself first-hand in a cesspit so they don’t have to.”—Michael Burleigh, Literary Review“A nuanced and sophisticated look at MAGA’s intellectual and institutional infrastructure.”—David Austin Walsh, Washington Monthly“Furious Minds covers an enormous range of figures and ideas. This means that despite being more than four hundred pages long, it moves at an appropriately furious pace.”—Matt McManus, Commonweal