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What's The Matter With Kansas?
How Conservatives Won The Heart Of America
by Thomas Frank


7.0

based on 17 reviews
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based on 6 votes
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The founding editor of "The Baffler" explores how the conservative corporate elite convinced the blue-collar Midwest that they should all be Republicans.

Henry Holt & Co./Metropolitan Books, 320 pages
06/2004
$24.00

ISBN: 0805073396

Nonfiction
Current Events & Politics

NOTES:
Known as 'What's The Matter With America?' in the UK.

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Kirkus Reviews

A fire-and-brimstone essay on false consciousness on the Great Plains.

Boston Globe Steve Greenlee

Forget Bill Clinton's autobiography. "What's the Matter With Kansas?" is the must-read of this election season. Republican voters need to read it to better understand their party and their leaders. Democrats need to read it to better understand their opponents and their conundrum.

New York Observer Kevin Canfield

Mr. Frank's willingness to scold his own side; his irreverence and his facility with language; his ability to make the connections that other writers fail to make--all of this puts What's the Matter With Kansas in a different league from most of the political books that have come out in the last decade.

The Guardian Steven Poole

Frank's brilliant analysis shows how conservatives appropriated the language of victimisation from the left.

The Independent Godfrey Hodgson

A heartland radical perhaps sees more clearly than ... English converts to conservative ideology what that populist patrician, Theodore Roosevelt, saw 100 years ago: that America "will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."

The Nation George Scialabba

Instead of shouting futilely across the kitchen table, [Frank] has turned his quarrel with his home state into a brilliant book, one of the best so far this decade on American politics.

Houston Chronicle Steve Weinberg

Frank's is a mind-bending book, but only for readers who approach it with an open mind.

San Francisco Chronicle Paul Buhle

[A] very funny and very painful book.

The New Yorker

Kansas, once home to farmers who marched against "money power," is now solidly Republican. In Frank's scathing and high-spirited polemic, this fact is not just "the mystery of Kansas" but "the mystery of America."

Atlantic Monthly Marc Cooper

In one of last year's infinitely more thoughtful political books, What's the Matter With Kansas?, Thomas Frank wittily and skillfully deconstructed what might be dubbed the Great Con Job: the conservative canard that somehow Democrats have cornered the market on elitism, while the GOP's bleeding heart is more with the little guy than with Enron's Kenneth Lay

New York Review Of Books Jason Epstein

[A] lively, heartfelt, somewhat repetitive book

LA Weekly Judith Lewis

He can't tell what's in the hearts of the working class, and as shrewd and pointed (and irresistibly entertaining) as his analysis can be at times, he doesn't look deeply enough to know. He blames the Democratic Party for its lack of vision; he suspects people really have feeling for unborn babies. But he can't get behind their eyes.

London Review Of Books Anatol Lieven

Thomas Frank's important and fascinating book on the Republican base in the Midwestern heartland anticipates and tries to answer the riddle posed by the election: why did so many poor white Americans vote for a Republican Party which has become more and more blatantly devoted to favouring the rich at the expense of the poor?

Los Angeles Times Chris Suellentrop

What's the Matter With Kansas? [is an] occasionally hilarious, mildly repetitive, but ultimately pleasurable read that will be persuasive only to people who already agree with [it].

Salon Andrew O'Hehir

This book is a serious, daring and largely convincing exploration of a question most commentators approach with facile generalities: How did the right conquer middle America and turn the region's populist heritage to its own ends?

Chicago Tribune Jefferson Cowie

Frank has made much sense of the world in this book; it will prove to be a revelation to many and a source of outrage for others.

The New York Times Book Review Josh Chafetz

Because it is self-evident to Frank that people's true interests are material ones, it is also self-evident to him that conservatives can only be either deluders or deluded, knaves or fools. Good-faith, intelligent disagreement is ruled out from the beginning.

The average user rating for this book is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

David K gave it a1:
The author, while bringing up some interesting ideas about why Kansas is so Republican, doesn't seem to understand his own point. Instead of taking on the issues of conservative "values" voters, such as abortion, gay rights, family values, or economic issues, such as deregulation, lowering taxes, and deunionizing he simply takes it that the values are crazy and the economics as false. Don't worry, however, he backs up his arguments with anecdotal evidence.

Fred R gave it a9:
Some broad generalizations but how else could this topic be handled? Pitty America.

paul k gave it a10:
Greatest book in the last ten years. Frank understands conservative propaganda, and knows how to uncover its evil intent.

Shauna J gave it a2:
I am a Democrat, but this book was terrible. Extreme generalizations are made with no evidence to back it, and his understanding of economics is extremely weak. A generally insulting and stupid book.

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What's The Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won The Heart Of America by Thomas Frank

What's The Matter With Kansas?
How Conservatives Won The Heart Of America
by Thomas Frank