Review by Choice Review
The Undertow adds to the growing number of books examining the fractured nation that characterizes the present condition in American political and cultural life. Sharlet (Dartmouth College), the author or editor of eight books, attempts to understand how a large segment of Americans turned their distrust in the federal government into paranoia and fantasy. The author's trek into the heartland of the US led him to interview MAGA followers at political rallies and religious revivals, ultimately alerting readers that the existing divisions in the US will not be readily resolved by convincing large bodies of Americans that what they believe is not subject to rational discourse. Rather, conspiracy theories and fantasies govern responses to a crisis that Sharlet warns is leading to a civil war. His chapter "The Trumpocene" should be required reading for everyone concerned about the future of democracy. In it, Sharlet shows that Trump's followers see him as the instrument of God sent to cleanse the US from the "cannibalistic" Democratic Party and that Ashli Babbitt, an insurrectionist killed on January 6, 2021, is hailed as a martyr of white womanhood. This is crucial reading. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. --Jack Robert Fischel, emeritus, Millersville University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
The insurrection on January 6, 2021, did not spring forth from Trump's forehead fully formed and ready for battle like Athena, sporting conspiracy theories instead of wisdom. Anger on the far right had been building for years before Trump's candidacy. Journalist Sharlet (This Brilliant Darkness, 2020) is the tour guide for the "Trumpocene," reporting from the lion's den of Trump rallies, fundamentalist churches, "the manosphere," seedy internet spaces, and prosperity gospel tent revivals. Traveling through the interior of divided America and asking people about the potential for civil war, Sharlet blends reportage with philosophical meditations and many clever turns of phrase. He identifies the titular undercurrent of fascism, rage, and paranoia backed by huge stockpiles of guns and organized by greedy charlatans masquerading as men of God and self-proclaimed militia leaders who threaten the very existence of American democracy. Sharlet also looks into the self-caused martyrdom of Ashli Babbitt, shot on January 6 inside the Capitol, and her significance to insurrectionist lore. This is a grim but necessary examination of democracy's potential assassins, leavened by Sharlet's incredible storytelling and acute observations.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Reporter and photographer Sharlet (The Family) probes the intersections of faith and right-wing politics in these meditative essays. Profiling Trump supporters who believe they must save the nation from unseen evil forces, churchgoers who hope to emulate the lavish lifestyles of their pastors, and "manosphere" bloggers who insist that the most oppressed group in modern America is the white cisgender male, Sharlet notes a shared desire among his subjects to achieve the greatness they feel they've been denied. Trump and his followers subscribe to "the prosperity gospel, the American religion of winning," which has roots in Norman Vincent Peale's "applied Christianity," while Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr., leader of Vous Church in Miami, sells a specific, celebrity-infused brand of "hipster Christendom," which encourages followers to "bask in his glamour and become ever so slightly glamorous themselves." Elsewhere, Sharlet discusses how Ashli Babbitt, who was killed during the January 6 Capitol riot, has become a modern-day martyr for the right. An excellent interviewer, Sharlet elicits eye-opening commentary from Trump rallygoers, militia members, QAnon conspiracists, teenage pro-choice protestors, and more. Poetic descriptions of America's landscape and history punctuate Sharlet's unsettling insights into the undercurrents of fear, isolation, and anger coursing through the country. It's a jaw-dropping portrait of a country on the edge. Photos. (Mar.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
A National Magazine Award-winning journalist whose The Family served as the basis of a Netflix documentary series, Sharlet explores a splintering nation from the perspective of gender, faith, and money. In particular, as he attends to the religious aspects of Trump rallies in 2016 and 2020, he looks at Christian churches that preach hate while fostering materialism and the Right's near-deification of Donald Trump.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Nightmarish dispatches from the camps of the "Trumpocene." At the epicenter of Sharlet's account is Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was killed while attempting to breach the Capitol during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. She was, writes the author, "a fool who pursued her own death," but then adds, "And yet, the rest of us might say the same of ourselves." That's a debatable proposition, but what isn't debatable is how Babbitt, wholly committed to Trumpism, has been converted into a martyr, a symbol of MAGA vexillology: "Ashli Babbitt was processed, made productive, almost immediately after her death, transformed right away into yet another flag, like a new tarot card in the deck of fascism." If Sharlet tries to give her a touch of a pass--she was someone's daughter, once a little girl who loved horses--it comes back to doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Babbitt is the subject of constant debate and remembrance among the people Sharlet encountered as he traveled around the country, a journey that led him to lay out a sharp, distressing portrait of a chaotic future: MAGA America is pumped up for, even eagerly anticipating, civil war, egged on by self-serving fundamentalist preachers, undergirded by antisemitism and QAnon dogma, and manipulated by Trump, who "fused his penchant for self-pity with the paranoia that runs like a third rail through Christian conservatism, the thrilling promise of 'spiritual war' with dark and hidden powers." It seems perhaps an odd digression for Sharlet to begin his account with a meditation on the subversive hidden meaning of the Harry Belafonte song "Day O!" but in the end, it all makes sense--far more so than the MAGA devotee who cursed Democrats for, as he confusedly asserts, "outlawing abortion." A frightening, wholly believable vision of an American cataclysm to come--possibly soon. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
