Divided into three parts-history, anatomy, and prophecy, The Right Nation comes neither to bury the American conservative movement nor to praise it blindly but to understand it, in all its dimensions, as the most powerful and effective political movement of our age. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, who steer "The Economist's" coverage of the United States, like modern-day Tocquevilles, have the iconoclastic and impartial perspective to see this vast subject in the round, unbeholden to forces on either side. [Penguin Press]
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Booklist Bryce Christensen
No one who wants to understand the possible political trajectories for a country that befuddles--and not infrequently enrages--its European allies can ignore this book. [1 June 2004, p.1676]
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Outstanding
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The Spectator Graham Stewart
In marked contrast to the unhinged rants of Michael Moore and the blatant prejudice of his imitators, The Right Nation is authoritative, entertaining and astonishing in its breadth and objectivity. It can perhaps make claim to an extraordinary boast as the best book on modern America in print.
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Favorable
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Library Journal William D. Pederson
The authors' viewpoint and writing reflect the magazine for which they work: both are highly articulate, intelligent, insightful, and sometimes just plain wrong. Still, political junkies on both sides of the political spectrum will enjoy and gain from the analysis. Highly recommended.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
This epochal political transformation is rarely analyzed with the degree of dispassionate clarity that Micklethwait and Wooldridge bring to their penetrating analysis.
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Favorable
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New York Review Of Books Tony Judt
The generation of intellectuals and politicians responsible for US foreign policy today did not emerge by chance, as John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge convincingly demonstrate in The Right Nation, their detailed account of right-wing political culture in contemporary America.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Ted Widmer
Like the Duke and Dauphin in ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,'' they are skilled at insinuating their way into the confidence of the locals, and the resulting study will go far to explain Americans to themselves... The writing is consistently crisp and intelligent, the conclusions balanced.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Alan Wolfe
Micklethwait and Wooldridge fail to appreciate the conservative appropriation of liberal ideas because their book pays little attention to ideas of any sort. Conservatism, they write, is new and different, but they never say whether it makes sense.
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Unfavorable
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The Guardian Steven Poole
"How can you trumpet a strong military and a vigorous foreign policy and then insist on small government?" they ask at the beginning. "How can you celebrate individualism but then try to subject those individuals to the rule of God?" These are splendid questions, so it's a shame that this intelligent book never quite answers them.
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Unfavorable
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Washington Post David Greenberg
[The authors] don't seem to realize, though, that their warmed-over analyses may strike many Stateside readers as familiar and outdated.
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Unfavorable
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The Independent Godfrey Hodgson
They have accepted, essentially uncritically, the conservative narrative. They trot out the stereotypes of Washington conservative journalists, presenting liberals as bearded, ponytailed pot-smokers. They accept the preposterous conservative oversimplification that the rich are liberals, while the plain folk are conservatives.
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