Ebook: America first!: it's history, culture, and politics

The evolution of populist antiwar sentiment. Ham 'n' Amos : the populist and patrician roots of America first -- There are left the mountains : American writers and the perishing republic -- The merchants of death of Sunset Boulevard -- Let us now praise famous America Firsters. Alice of malice : the other side of Rooseveltism -- Sinclair Lewis : it's a grand republic -- Patriotic Gore Vidal -- Fulbright : the first Arkansas Bill -- Edward Abbey : parched in the American desert -- Jack Kerouac : the beat goes right -- Autumn in new England : the last Jeffersonian -- America First renewed. The new party of the old republic -- The devil thumbs a ride : Buchanan, Perot, and the middle American Revolt -- The coiled rattle snake : an America First foreign policy for the 1990s -- Epilogue: the road to Trump.;"A timely history of the America First movement, now receiving renewed attention due to the populist rhetoric of Donald Trump"--;Bill Kauffman, a columnist for The American Conservative, examines the nineteenth-century underpinnings and twentieth-century eruptions of American isolationism and nationalism, which are the fault lines along which the politics of the 21st century are cleaving. He weaves a fascinating tale that links Sinclair Lewis to NAFTA, 'The Best Years of Our Lives' to Ross Perot, and the Old Right to the New Left. He discusses the Perot phenomenon, the presidential campaign and the influence of Pat Buchanan, the impact of free trade agreements, the film industry of the 1930s, and a fascinating cast of characters and causes in what is sure to be controversial reading. The populist-isolationist song continues to be sung by many ordinary Americans who are far from the corridors of power yet who decry passionately, even desperately, what they consider reckless and destructive foreign wars and economic and immigration policies. In a new preface and epilogue written especially for this reissue, Kauffman traces the evolution of America First sentiment over the past twenty years: from its near-eclipse in the war hysteria of the George W. Bush administration to its revival in 2016 with the populist campaigns of Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders. America First! is a rarity among political books: it remains more timely, relevant, and even urgent than ever"--Provided by publisher.