Republican Gomorrah (Paperback)

Max Blumenthal
July 2010     ISBN: 1568583982

An explosive bestseller, Max Blumenthal’s Republican Gomorrah is a bestiary of dysfunction, scandal, and crime from the movement that runs the Republican Party. It reveals in compelling detail how a culture of personal crisis has defined the radical right, transforming the nature of the Republican Party for the next generation, and setting the stage for its vitriolic campaign to delegitimize the Obama presidency. Blumenthal describes the people and beliefs that establishment Republicans kowtow when running for president, and how moderates have been purged from party ranks. More than a jaw-dropping exposé—it shows how many of the movement’s leading figures, including Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, are united by far greater forces than political campaigns or the power they wield; they are bound together by a shared sensibility rooted in lives strained by crisis and scandal.

“Lurid.” —New York Review of Books

“An important new book. . . . Max Blumenthal reports how a party once epitomized by honorable conservatives like Bob Dole, George H. W. Bush, and John McCain, has come to be dominated by extremists, lunatics, and just plain creepy people.” —Paul Begala, CNN.com

“It is Blumenthal’s great achievement to connect the dots between the truly scary figures of the lunatic fringe and today’s mainstream Republican Party leadership…Superb…indispensable” —American Prospect

“A fast-moving romp that's part sociology, part psychology, part gossip column.” —Daily Kos

“Terrific… Blumenthal does two things that no one else I have read manages to do—the first of these is that he organizes the network... Right wing psychology is the other thing that Blumenthal has to offer… an eye-opener.” —Jane Smiley, The Huffington Post

“Blumenthal is at his best examining these characters up close… For those who enjoyed Jeff Sharlet's Capitol Hill exposé The Family, this makes a spicy follow-up.” —Publishers Weekly
 
"With scarcely more than a pith helmet, a notebook, and a tattered copy of Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm’s great study of authoritarian psychology, the dauntless Max Blumenthal set forth years ago to explore the dank forests of American Christianism. Now he has returned to civilization, bringing back a fine collection of shrunken heads and a riveting account of a religio-political subculture that’s even weirder than you thought it was. Republican Gomorrah is an irresistible combination of anthropology and psychopathology that exerts the queasy fascination of (let’s face it) something very like pornography."
—Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor, The New Yorker
 
“Republican Gomorrah is a powerful study of right-wing extremism, replete with perversions perpetrated on all Americans in the name of the Culture Wars. Blumenthal shines a klieg light on the charlatans whose tactics would make Goebbels proud but must cause mainstream Republicans to hang their heads in shame.” —Ambassador Joe Wilson
 
“A brave and resourceful reporter adept at turning over rocks that public-relations-savvy Christian conservative leaders would prefer remain undisturbed.” —Rick Perlstein, New York Times Book Review
 
“Over the past several years, Blumenthal’s work has focused on fringe groups on the right. He has excelled in covering political activism among evangelicals. His technique is simple: he confronts the subjects and lets them speak for themselves…Were it not for the determination and fearlessness of Max Blumenthal, we would [be] largely ignorant of Palin’s Christianist political theology.” —Scott Horton, Harper’s

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist whose articles and video documentaries have appeared in The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon and many other publications. He is a senior writer for The Daily Beast and writing fellow at The Nation Institute.