Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Award The Nation's "Most Valuable Book" "[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right."-The Atlantic "This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be."-NPR An explosive expose of the right's relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution. Behind today's headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect-the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan-and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite's power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan's work in teaching others how to divide America into "makers" and "takers." And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan's strategy. Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.

In the 1950s, the exclusion of women and of black and Latino men from higher-paying jobs was so universal as to seem normal to most Americans. Today, diversity in the workforce is a point of pride. How did such a transformation come about?

In this bold and groundbreaking work, Nancy MacLeanshows how African-American and later Mexican-American civil rights activists and feminists concluded that freedom alone would not suffice: access to jobs at all levels is a requisite of full citizenship. Tracing the struggle to open the American workplace to all, MacLean chronicles the cultural and political advances that have irrevocably changed our nation over the past fifty years.

"Freedom Is Not Enough" reveals the fundamental role jobs play in the struggle for equality. We meet the grassroots activists--rank-and-file workers, community leaders, trade unionists, advocates, lawyers--and their allies in government who fight for fair treatment, as we also witness the conservative forces that assembled to resist their demands. Weaving a powerful and memorable narrative, MacLean demonstrates the life-altering impact of the Civil Rights Act and the movement for economic advancement that it fostered.

The struggle for jobs reached far beyond the workplace to transform American culture. MacLean enables us to understand why so many came to see good jobs for all as the measure of full citizenship in a vital democracy. Opening up the workplace, she shows, opened minds and hearts to the genuine inclusion of all Americans for the first time in our nation's history.

"Scalawag" tells the surprising story of a white working-class boy who became an unlikely civil rights activist. Born in 1935 in Richmond, where he was sent to segregated churches and schools, Ed Peeples was taught the ethos and lore of white supremacy by every adult in his young life. That message came with an equally cruel one--that, as the child of a wage-earning single mother, he was destined for failure.

But by age nineteen Peeples became what the whites in his world called a "traitor to the race." Pushed by a lone teacher to think critically, Peeples found his way to the black freedom struggle and began a long life of activism. He challenged racism in his U.S. Navy unit and engaged in sit-ins and community organizing. Later, as a university professor, he agitated for good jobs, health care, and decent housing for all, pushed for the creation of African American studies courses at his university, and worked toward equal treatment for women, prison reform, and more. Peeples did most of his human rights work in his native Virginia, and his story reveals how institutional racism pervaded the Upper South as much as the Deep South.

Covering fifty years' participation in the long civil rights movement, Peeples's gripping story brings to life an unsung activist culture to which countless forgotten individuals contributed, over time expanding their commitment from civil rights to other causes. This engrossing, witty tale of escape from what once seemed certain fate invites readers to reflect on how moral courage can transform a life.

Scalawag tells the surprising story of a white working-class boy who became an unlikely civil rights activist. Covering fifty years' participation in thelong civil rights movement, Peeples's gripping story brings to life an unsung activist culture to which countless forgotten individuals contributed, over time expanding their commitment from civil rights to other causes.

The American women's movement was one of the most influential social movements of the twentieth century. Beginning with small numbers, the women's movement eventually involved tens of thousands of women and men. Longstanding ideas and habits came under scrutiny as activists questioned and changed the nation's basic institutions, including all branches of government, the workplace, and the family. Nancy MacLean's introduction and collection of primary sources engage students with the most up-to-date scholarship in U.S. women's history. The introduction traces the deep roots of the women's movement and demonstrates the continuity from women's activism in the labor movement and New Deal networks, the black civil rights movement, and the peace movement to the height of Second Wave feminism and into the Third Wave. The primary sources reflect the social breadth and depth of the movement. Dispelling the misconception that the American women's movement was solely a white, middle-class cause, the documents include the voices of women of all ages, classes, and ethnicities. Topics addressed range from wage discrimination, peace activism, housework and childcare, sexuality, and reproductive rights to welfare, education, socialism, violence against women, and more. Document headnotes, a chronology of the women's movement, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and index support student learning, classroom discussion, and further research.

An explosive expose of the man who devoted his career to shackling democracy - and succeeded. Libertarian billionaires are using their wealth and power to drastically curtail the US democratic process, disempowering ordinary citizens whilst entrenching the influence of corporations as never before. In Democracy in Chains, award-winning historian Nancy MacLean reveals how the ideas of Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan have been used to undermine the power of voters in a country whose Constitution is founded on the principle 'We the people'. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, this chilling movement has a loyalist in the White House, as well as supporters in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts. Democracy in Chains is a timely, important book, which should be read by anybody interested in the future of democracy.

Debating the American Conservative Movement chronicles one of the most dramatic stories of modern American political history. The authors describe how a small band of conservatives in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War launched a revolution that shifted American politics to the right, challenged the New Deal order, transformed the Republican party into a voice of conservatism, and set the terms of debate in American politics as the country entered the new millennium. Historians Donald T. Critchlow and Nancy MacLean frame two opposing perspectives of how the history of conservatism in modern America can be understood, but readers are encouraged to reach their own conclusions through reading engaging primary documents.

Debating the American Conservative Movement chronicles one of the most dramatic stories of modern American political history. The authors describe how a small band of conservatives in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War launched a revolution that shifted American politics to the right, challenged the New Deal order, transformed the Republican party into a voice of conservatism, and set the terms of debate in American politics as the country entered the new millennium. Historians Donald T. Critchlow and Nancy MacLean frame two opposing perspectives of how the history of conservatism in modern America can be understood, but readers are encouraged to reach their own conclusions through reading engaging primary documents.