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A review by bookshelf_from_mars
Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy by Elaine Tyler May
3.0
To keep things simple, I'd break the book down into what it did well and what it didn't -- three of the former and three of the latter.
May writes best and most authoritatively when she discusses the post-war anxieties of atomic war. This is her area of expertise, and the quality of the evidence and the historical context shines.
Throughout the book, May incorporates popular culture and media to illustrate the way society has succumbed to fear in its various strands. I'd note her reference to modern superhero genre films as the newest iteration of America's obsession with vigilante heroes as a strong example.
The chapters on racial divisions and the war on drugs, abortion and women's rights, and gun rights synthesize well writings others have done on the subjects individually. They work well as introductions to the topics.
The author's political leanings come through in the choice of topics to cover and the framing to give them. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does lead May into some partisan holes that could turn off readers of the opposite partisan lean. She doesn't investigate several potential legitimate reasons for Americans to fear or distrust their government, for example. While she touches on the FBI's surveillance of activists and the massacres of civilians in Vietnam, she misses low hanging fruit like Watergate or Iran-Contra. Additionally, she sometimes uncritically reports polling data without explaining their origin. In the conclusion, for example, May talks about how in 2012 79% of Republicans held anti-black views -- a shocking figure, but one that is presented without further explanation in the text.
The author also misses out on sources of fear that are of equal import to the ones she describes in the text. Anxieties over immigration and demographic change spring most prominently to mind.
Finally, the author doesn't make a solid connection between increasing fear an isolation in the country and a loss of democracy. The point of felon disenfranchisement as an example of this loss seems to be the only real world consequence of popular fear spreading in the body politic. There are others that I can imagine, but the author doesn't discuss them.
May writes best and most authoritatively when she discusses the post-war anxieties of atomic war. This is her area of expertise, and the quality of the evidence and the historical context shines.
Throughout the book, May incorporates popular culture and media to illustrate the way society has succumbed to fear in its various strands. I'd note her reference to modern superhero genre films as the newest iteration of America's obsession with vigilante heroes as a strong example.
The chapters on racial divisions and the war on drugs, abortion and women's rights, and gun rights synthesize well writings others have done on the subjects individually. They work well as introductions to the topics.
The author's political leanings come through in the choice of topics to cover and the framing to give them. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does lead May into some partisan holes that could turn off readers of the opposite partisan lean. She doesn't investigate several potential legitimate reasons for Americans to fear or distrust their government, for example. While she touches on the FBI's surveillance of activists and the massacres of civilians in Vietnam, she misses low hanging fruit like Watergate or Iran-Contra. Additionally, she sometimes uncritically reports polling data without explaining their origin. In the conclusion, for example, May talks about how in 2012 79% of Republicans held anti-black views -- a shocking figure, but one that is presented without further explanation in the text.
The author also misses out on sources of fear that are of equal import to the ones she describes in the text. Anxieties over immigration and demographic change spring most prominently to mind.
Finally, the author doesn't make a solid connection between increasing fear an isolation in the country and a loss of democracy. The point of felon disenfranchisement as an example of this loss seems to be the only real world consequence of popular fear spreading in the body politic. There are others that I can imagine, but the author doesn't discuss them.