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Also by Thomas Frank:

Listen, Liberal, March 2016
Hardcover / e-Book
Pity The Billionaire, January 2012
Paperback / e-Book
The Wrecking Crew, August 2008
Hardcover
What's the Matter with Kansas?, June 2004
Hardcover

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?
By: Thomas Frank

One of our most insightful social observers cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans

How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
Metropolitan Books
June 2004
320 pages
ISBN: 0805073396
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction

With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the “thirty-year backlash”—the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party’s success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers.

In asking “what ’s the matter with Kansas?”—how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union—Frank, a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where’s the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism—the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat—and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders’ “values” and down- home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy.

A brilliant analysis—and funny to boot—What’s the Matter with Kansas? presents a critical assessment of who we are, while telling a remarkable story of how a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs came to convince a nation that they spoke on behalf of the People.

Media Buzz

Lou Dobbs Tonight - April 14, 2008
Weekends with Maury and Connie - June 10, 2006
All Things Considered - October 9, 2005