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The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War
An Instant New York Times Bestseller.
One of America’s finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart.
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
Across the country, men “of God” glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war—a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened—love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.
Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.
Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility.
One of America’s finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart.
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
Across the country, men “of God” glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war—a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened—love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.
Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.
Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility.
341 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 21, 2023
849 people are currently reading
11181 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Sharlet
17 books434 followersJeff Sharlet is the New York Times bestselling author and editor of eight books of creative nonfiction and photography, including The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, The Family—adapted into a Netflix documentary series of the same name hosted by Sharlet—and This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers. Sharlet is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Harper's, and Rolling Stone, and an editor-at-large for VQR. He has also written for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, New York, Bookforum, and other publications. His writing on Russia’s anti-LGBTQIA+ crusade earned the National Magazine Award and his writing on anti-LGBTQIA+ campaigns in Uganda earned the Molly National Journalism Prize, the Outright International’s Outspoken Award, and the Americans United Person of the Year Award, among others. He has served as a Nonfiction Panel Chair for the National Book Award and received multiple fellowships from MacDowell. Sharlet is the Frederick Sessions Beebe ’35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College. He lives in Vermont, where he is trying to learn the names of plants.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 397 reviews
April 5, 2023
A few scattered thoughts upon finishing this book last night:
Sharlet's prose won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I really, really admired it. It elevates some sections above simple reporting into an almost mystical territory.
This is how you do these "Trumpocene" interviews--without condescension towards the subjects, skeptical but not combative, noting internal contradictions and hypocrisies but not getting hung up on them because they're ultimately not the point.
Sharlet weaves a lot of seemingly disparate issues and ideas together--guns and abortion, Trump and Gnosticism. Even when I'm not totally convinced by his connections, I found them fascinating and engaging.
The bookending of the twin essays on Harry Belafonte and Lee Hays was a brilliant touch. I was feeling despair creeping in near the end, but finishing by hearing about Hays struggles and his songs brought me back.
Sharlet's prose won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I really, really admired it. It elevates some sections above simple reporting into an almost mystical territory.
This is how you do these "Trumpocene" interviews--without condescension towards the subjects, skeptical but not combative, noting internal contradictions and hypocrisies but not getting hung up on them because they're ultimately not the point.
Sharlet weaves a lot of seemingly disparate issues and ideas together--guns and abortion, Trump and Gnosticism. Even when I'm not totally convinced by his connections, I found them fascinating and engaging.
The bookending of the twin essays on Harry Belafonte and Lee Hays was a brilliant touch. I was feeling despair creeping in near the end, but finishing by hearing about Hays struggles and his songs brought me back.
June 4, 2023
It’s definitely one of the best books I’ve read this year, but it’s certainly not the most uplifting. In fact, it’s downright disturbing and frightening, which creates a kind of cognitive dissonance since it is also beautifully written.
Jeff Sharlet’s “The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War” is journalism at its finest and most poignant. Written as a travelogue through Trump country, Sharlet’s book is an attempt to try to understand the mentality of certain groups of people: Trump supporters, pedophiles, televangelists who preach hate in the name of Jesus, racists, violent pro-lifers, and gun-loving militia members ready to wage war against the evil liberal elites.
He sits down with these people and talks to them, letting them just speak. Occasionally, he’ll ask questions. Mostly, he just lets them speak.
Amazingly, he didn’t die. He didn’t hide the fact that he was a liberal or a journalist or a Jew. Maybe it was this honesty that made them feel comfortable enough to talk with him. Laying all the cards on the table allowed them to do the same.
The result is, at times, tension-filled and horrifying. Sharlet records some of the most vile and cringe-worthy conversations ever. At times, though, he actually succeeds in finding the humanity buried at the heart of some of the most atrocious people.
Sharlet’s “trick” is that he never calls them atrocious people. I’m pretty sure that he never actually thinks it. To him, they are Americans who, like him, have problems with this country, but they just have wildly divergent opinions as to what those problems are and how to solve them. This isn’t to say that Sharlet doesn’t admit to being frightened by these people. He just doesn’t let that fear negate the fact that these are still human beings, not the villainous “them” (as in the age-old “us vs. them”) that many of these people resort to using (and which I will admit to being guilty of using myself, most notably in that last paragraph).
This is an extremely important book, and it may be the first truly great book about the Trump Era. I can’t recommend it enough.
Jeff Sharlet’s “The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War” is journalism at its finest and most poignant. Written as a travelogue through Trump country, Sharlet’s book is an attempt to try to understand the mentality of certain groups of people: Trump supporters, pedophiles, televangelists who preach hate in the name of Jesus, racists, violent pro-lifers, and gun-loving militia members ready to wage war against the evil liberal elites.
He sits down with these people and talks to them, letting them just speak. Occasionally, he’ll ask questions. Mostly, he just lets them speak.
Amazingly, he didn’t die. He didn’t hide the fact that he was a liberal or a journalist or a Jew. Maybe it was this honesty that made them feel comfortable enough to talk with him. Laying all the cards on the table allowed them to do the same.
The result is, at times, tension-filled and horrifying. Sharlet records some of the most vile and cringe-worthy conversations ever. At times, though, he actually succeeds in finding the humanity buried at the heart of some of the most atrocious people.
Sharlet’s “trick” is that he never calls them atrocious people. I’m pretty sure that he never actually thinks it. To him, they are Americans who, like him, have problems with this country, but they just have wildly divergent opinions as to what those problems are and how to solve them. This isn’t to say that Sharlet doesn’t admit to being frightened by these people. He just doesn’t let that fear negate the fact that these are still human beings, not the villainous “them” (as in the age-old “us vs. them”) that many of these people resort to using (and which I will admit to being guilty of using myself, most notably in that last paragraph).
This is an extremely important book, and it may be the first truly great book about the Trump Era. I can’t recommend it enough.
May 12, 2023
Were you looking for yet another account of the MAGA world? I can hear the audible groans. Well, coming in as a relatively later entrant, Sharlet has probably delivered the widest account of the MAGA landscape that I have seen. It's not perfect by any means, but it paints a picture of what is going on at a fairly deep level.
Somewhere, I think in Civilization and its Discontents, Freud talks about the give and the take, the projection and the introjection between the authoritarian leader and the authoritarian follower; in a sense, he argued that the authoritarian crowd is in search of a leader and they help create the course for their own followership. Perhaps the strength of the account in The Undertow is the panorama that is painted. It starts, of all places, with the very timely story of Harry Belafonte (who passed away just weeks after book was published) and the course of his friendship with MLK, ending of course in heartbreak; it then jumps to the brief utopianism of the Occupy movement. Only then does it undertake the descent into the contemporary hellscape of MAGA America through a long form journalism version of the American road story.
Once descending, Sharlet focuses on the panorama of formerly fringe and alt-reality Americans who help embody the base of Trump America at large. For the most part it is a skillful and relatively fair portrayal of their world. In this take on the American road story, you go from contemporary pop evangelical churches in Florida, to the men's rights movement, to the January 6 crowd including Proud Boys-like groups and Ashli Babbit who died in the attack on the Capitol, to the contemporary west where the locals glibly combine guns and churches and revisionist history and MAGA in a witches brew. These are the depths and farthest reaches of America's political and personal reaction. Often they are so engaged in the creation of an alternate reality that on occasion Sharlet seems to purposefully provoke a laugh at this or that thing they do or say. However, as is always clear, even when laughing at the absurdity, the absurd game they are playing is also always deathly serious.
It may be worth noting that I lived for three decades in the American south. During that time I knew and came across many people like those described in this work. In the past, they were more circumspect about flying their true colors around just any Tom Dick, and Harry. The fact they so readily do so in the encounters covered in this book probably reflects the new American reality on the far right after 2016 as well as Sharlet’s experience dealing with these folks and his self deprecating ways to disarm them and get them to reveal core layers of their identities.
The key to this account is you see how the MAGA base is willing into existence the MAGA world and their alt-right alternative American reality. The pastors and the other followers that Sharlet encounters are in a real sense getting their talking points mainlined from Fox News and are constructing their whole identities right out of priorities they get from there: guns, anti-Mexican and Central American immigration, anti-abortion, neo-revivalism, and Trump. These people were in a real sense looking for a movement and a leader and they help create both in the course of their followership. It seems that several of the figures that Sharlet documented were even gearing up and spoiling for a fight, be it with Sharlet or with some unnamed opponent.
The book is far from perfect in its way of storytelling. Sharlet can get carried away in his storytelling, sometimes engaging in narrative excesses and exuberances better suited for a Beat poet. At times it’s not clear if Sharlet picks his subjects based on happenstance, choice, or some combination. Throughout, he presents the interviews collected on the road trip as apparently random encounters. For a road trip through Trump country as the subject of a book, you would expect major portions to be planned to some extent. Similarly, Sharlet probably also spends too much time chasing the ghost of Ashli Babbitt, which made for a narrative throughline but also certainly overemphasizes her importance even in the MAGA world.
Sharlet would like the reader to see that the ship, which is America, is getting caught and pulled in the crosscurrents of this movement. It's the same set of currents that are giving rise to the almost weekly mass shootings as only one of their surface manifestations. The question is whether they can be navigated and steered through before they pull the ship under with them. The desired take home is that liberal and bourgeoise America are definitely not as worried as they should be. We have to be able to go about our lives and still be alarmed and act on the alarm. In many ways the alarm is a cry for help from a set of people who are walling themselves off and are stockpiling loads of guns behind those real and metaphorical walls. The last time these voices and cries from the American wilderness went unheard Donald Trump was elected President of the US.
Somewhere, I think in Civilization and its Discontents, Freud talks about the give and the take, the projection and the introjection between the authoritarian leader and the authoritarian follower; in a sense, he argued that the authoritarian crowd is in search of a leader and they help create the course for their own followership. Perhaps the strength of the account in The Undertow is the panorama that is painted. It starts, of all places, with the very timely story of Harry Belafonte (who passed away just weeks after book was published) and the course of his friendship with MLK, ending of course in heartbreak; it then jumps to the brief utopianism of the Occupy movement. Only then does it undertake the descent into the contemporary hellscape of MAGA America through a long form journalism version of the American road story.
Once descending, Sharlet focuses on the panorama of formerly fringe and alt-reality Americans who help embody the base of Trump America at large. For the most part it is a skillful and relatively fair portrayal of their world. In this take on the American road story, you go from contemporary pop evangelical churches in Florida, to the men's rights movement, to the January 6 crowd including Proud Boys-like groups and Ashli Babbit who died in the attack on the Capitol, to the contemporary west where the locals glibly combine guns and churches and revisionist history and MAGA in a witches brew. These are the depths and farthest reaches of America's political and personal reaction. Often they are so engaged in the creation of an alternate reality that on occasion Sharlet seems to purposefully provoke a laugh at this or that thing they do or say. However, as is always clear, even when laughing at the absurdity, the absurd game they are playing is also always deathly serious.
It may be worth noting that I lived for three decades in the American south. During that time I knew and came across many people like those described in this work. In the past, they were more circumspect about flying their true colors around just any Tom Dick, and Harry. The fact they so readily do so in the encounters covered in this book probably reflects the new American reality on the far right after 2016 as well as Sharlet’s experience dealing with these folks and his self deprecating ways to disarm them and get them to reveal core layers of their identities.
The key to this account is you see how the MAGA base is willing into existence the MAGA world and their alt-right alternative American reality. The pastors and the other followers that Sharlet encounters are in a real sense getting their talking points mainlined from Fox News and are constructing their whole identities right out of priorities they get from there: guns, anti-Mexican and Central American immigration, anti-abortion, neo-revivalism, and Trump. These people were in a real sense looking for a movement and a leader and they help create both in the course of their followership. It seems that several of the figures that Sharlet documented were even gearing up and spoiling for a fight, be it with Sharlet or with some unnamed opponent.
The book is far from perfect in its way of storytelling. Sharlet can get carried away in his storytelling, sometimes engaging in narrative excesses and exuberances better suited for a Beat poet. At times it’s not clear if Sharlet picks his subjects based on happenstance, choice, or some combination. Throughout, he presents the interviews collected on the road trip as apparently random encounters. For a road trip through Trump country as the subject of a book, you would expect major portions to be planned to some extent. Similarly, Sharlet probably also spends too much time chasing the ghost of Ashli Babbitt, which made for a narrative throughline but also certainly overemphasizes her importance even in the MAGA world.
Sharlet would like the reader to see that the ship, which is America, is getting caught and pulled in the crosscurrents of this movement. It's the same set of currents that are giving rise to the almost weekly mass shootings as only one of their surface manifestations. The question is whether they can be navigated and steered through before they pull the ship under with them. The desired take home is that liberal and bourgeoise America are definitely not as worried as they should be. We have to be able to go about our lives and still be alarmed and act on the alarm. In many ways the alarm is a cry for help from a set of people who are walling themselves off and are stockpiling loads of guns behind those real and metaphorical walls. The last time these voices and cries from the American wilderness went unheard Donald Trump was elected President of the US.
April 19, 2023
Sharlet, as you can tell from some of the Podcasts he does, has one of the most nuanced appreciations of this American fascist moment, and has far more insight then most of the commentators one currently encounters. This book, too, has some magnificent passages. Unfortunately, every Sharlet book I’ve read is at least 50% too long if not more. So one has to be prepared to skim. Anyway, with that caveat, an important book.
August 23, 2023
I wanted to read this because Scarlett’s previous book The Family was the best work of investigative journalism I’ve ever seen. This book is more sketchy, based on rambling travels across the USA and conversations with local folks on various sides of the great culture wars divide. He talks with Black civil rights activists, Trump rally enthusiasts, Occupy Wall Street participants, “Manosphere” defenders of male rights, Christian nationalists, “red-pilled” conspiracy theorists, and militia members prepping for civil war. With his mild, minimal conversation style, Scarlett always seems like a potential convert. He gets people talking, and they commonly talk of civil war. Of course it’s puzzling to think how that could work, since almost all the USA’s urban centers are mainly liberal. It’s unclear where lines could be drawn to divide the country. But maybe the advocates of civil war are not talking about succession. Maybe they just demand dominion. The way they commonly describe their rivals, as traitorous, satanic, degenerate cockroaches, resembles the talk in Rwanda before 1994.
March 23, 2023
Whew, boy. A strange and disturbing book, as befits its subject. "Christian" nationalism, the far right, guns, guns, guns, and so much more. Very, very, very dispiriting.
April 12, 2023
Ever since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, I’ve been searching for reasons why, in this land of freedom, opportunity and prosperity, so many citizens succumb to the allure of intolerant, militant causes. “The Undertow” provided me with valuable clues.
Author/professor Jeff Sharlet spent more than a year traversing America talking with religious leaders, advocates of gun culture, QAnon believers, January 6 “truthers”, and others on the extreme right political spectrum. He discovered dark corners of contemporary American society, where misinformation and conspiracy theories abound. He found an alternate world where citizens express unbridled rage and paranoia over imagined grievances.
Sharlet’s interviews are revelatory and, at times, shocking. I am a “retired” Roman Catholic and have fond memories of attending mass with my mother. Sunday Mass was a celebration of Christ, fostering peace, love, forgiveness and brotherhood.
Sharlet describes a different kind of modern evangelical church, where pastors blend worship with extreme political orthodoxies. In his travels, Sharlet met preachers who held up weapons as icons of adoration. He attended churches that hosted political provocateurs, guest speakers who spewed misinformation, outrageous lies, and venomous hate in the name of God. Like the snake-oil salesmen of an earlier generation, these paid lecturers make a prosperous living by traveling from church-to-church, playing on people’s insecurities and emotions.
How do everyday people come to believe that Hillary Clinton eats children? Or, that Donald Trump was sent by the Lord to clean up the deep-state pedophiles that are at the heart of our Federal government? The answers lie in the classic propaganda methods refined by Joseph Goebbels and Tokyo Rose: Build an alternate reality by juxtaposing the verifiable and the absurd, each vouching for the other. Then seal the deal with the imprimatur of God.
I came to pity many of the angry and sad people interviewed by Sharlet. I found it tragic that much of their anger stems from grievances over imagined threats. Caravans of immigrants. The great replacement theory. Homosexual grooming. Rampant pedophilia. Black UN helicopters. International Jewish cabals. The deep-state conspiracy. George Soros as the agent of the devil. Pizzagate. Mass shootings (and January 6) as false-flag operations.
So many Americans are missing out on the joys of life, wasting their time consumed with anger and resentment. Millions of our friends and neighbors harbor deep-seated hate and resentment, just waiting for the “secret signal” to lock-and-load the AR-15 and rise up against some ephemeral oppressor.
Sharlet’s book profiles a significant fraction of our Nation who live in a nihilistic fantasy. The subtitle of “The Undertow” is “Scenes From A Slow Civil War.” The consensus of Sharlet’s interviewees: The question is not whether parts of this Country will descend into chaos, but when it will happen.
Author/professor Jeff Sharlet spent more than a year traversing America talking with religious leaders, advocates of gun culture, QAnon believers, January 6 “truthers”, and others on the extreme right political spectrum. He discovered dark corners of contemporary American society, where misinformation and conspiracy theories abound. He found an alternate world where citizens express unbridled rage and paranoia over imagined grievances.
Sharlet’s interviews are revelatory and, at times, shocking. I am a “retired” Roman Catholic and have fond memories of attending mass with my mother. Sunday Mass was a celebration of Christ, fostering peace, love, forgiveness and brotherhood.
Sharlet describes a different kind of modern evangelical church, where pastors blend worship with extreme political orthodoxies. In his travels, Sharlet met preachers who held up weapons as icons of adoration. He attended churches that hosted political provocateurs, guest speakers who spewed misinformation, outrageous lies, and venomous hate in the name of God. Like the snake-oil salesmen of an earlier generation, these paid lecturers make a prosperous living by traveling from church-to-church, playing on people’s insecurities and emotions.
How do everyday people come to believe that Hillary Clinton eats children? Or, that Donald Trump was sent by the Lord to clean up the deep-state pedophiles that are at the heart of our Federal government? The answers lie in the classic propaganda methods refined by Joseph Goebbels and Tokyo Rose: Build an alternate reality by juxtaposing the verifiable and the absurd, each vouching for the other. Then seal the deal with the imprimatur of God.
I came to pity many of the angry and sad people interviewed by Sharlet. I found it tragic that much of their anger stems from grievances over imagined threats. Caravans of immigrants. The great replacement theory. Homosexual grooming. Rampant pedophilia. Black UN helicopters. International Jewish cabals. The deep-state conspiracy. George Soros as the agent of the devil. Pizzagate. Mass shootings (and January 6) as false-flag operations.
So many Americans are missing out on the joys of life, wasting their time consumed with anger and resentment. Millions of our friends and neighbors harbor deep-seated hate and resentment, just waiting for the “secret signal” to lock-and-load the AR-15 and rise up against some ephemeral oppressor.
Sharlet’s book profiles a significant fraction of our Nation who live in a nihilistic fantasy. The subtitle of “The Undertow” is “Scenes From A Slow Civil War.” The consensus of Sharlet’s interviewees: The question is not whether parts of this Country will descend into chaos, but when it will happen.
August 27, 2025
Civil War? America? OK, I’ll read this book. The author begins with writing a small biography of Harry Belafonte. I wonder why. I really don’t care anything about Harry Belafonte. I knew the banana boat song when I was a little kid. I think of putting the book down, but I can’t. Then I learned that Harry Belafonte is giving most of his money to the civil rights movement. Now I am impressed by Harry Belafonte. But the book soon changes to the authors interviewing people in the south, those in the far right movement. As he is doing this, he is popping heart medication pills, so he won’t have a heart attack. And now as I’m reading this, I was wishing that I had heart medication.
March 28, 2023
Beautifully written, deeply observant and reflective, and depressing as hell.
“The arc of history may yet bend toward justice, but the American arc, as played out onscreen — in a movie theater or a viral video of Ashli Babbitt’s killing on YouTube — took a sharp right turn from noir to paranoia to the hopeless absurd.” -page 259
“That is the great truth of our paranoia now: Not knowing. Not needing to. Not knowing as its own dim, dreaming certainty.” page 263
“The arc of history may yet bend toward justice, but the American arc, as played out onscreen — in a movie theater or a viral video of Ashli Babbitt’s killing on YouTube — took a sharp right turn from noir to paranoia to the hopeless absurd.” -page 259
“That is the great truth of our paranoia now: Not knowing. Not needing to. Not knowing as its own dim, dreaming certainty.” page 263
November 5, 2023
The friend who lent me this book said, "Read the first chapter on Harry Belafonte and the last chapter on someone whose name I didn't recognize. It's up to you whether or not to read the rest." What she was alluding to was that most of this book is about the people I (and the author and my friend) are afraid of: radical evangelists, men's rights activists, January 6 insurrectionists, the people who believe that a civil war is not only coming to the U.S. but should be coming. The opening and closing chapters (and the chapters that just precede them) are more in line with my politics and my worldview.
The Belafonte essay, "Voice and Hammer" is extraordinary. I knew a little bit about Belafonte as an activists, but nowhere near enough, and Sharlet's writing skills and passion are made for this topic. You can find the 2013 standalone essay in the Virginia Quarterly Review. Stop now and go read it.
Despite my friend's lukewarm encouragement to read the rest, I decided first, that I owed it to Jeff Sharlet to read the chapters he did so much hard physical and emotional work to write, and second, that he's an amazingly perceptive and careful writer and I wanted to know what he had to say. I was rewarded many times over.
Sharlet does two things in this book that almost no one else does or can do. First, he brings empathy and compassion to his subjects even when he is vehemently at odds with their beliefs and perceptions. As a parent of a nonbinary teenager in serious mental distress, he can still hear the voice of someone parroting anti-trans nonsense and take the person seriously without falling in line with their beliefs. I found this to be in stark contrast with Arlie Hochschild, who is often cited as the great translator of the America that fell in love with Trump to the America that didn't--but whom I find sugary and simplistic. Sharlet is neither.
The second thing he brings to this topic, which may be even more important than his empathy, is his ability to see beyond the facts to the dreams. As a lifelong writer about religion, he is conscious of and concerned about the belief systems, the ineffable concerns, the concepts that don't go into words. I don't think I've ever read anything else about my existential opponents that goes so deep and -- like everyone else who truly goes deep -- Sharlet is humble about his own role in the story.
"How to say then that Ashli Babbitt is not a martyr? There's the word itself, martyr, which means "witness," one's life given as testament to some larger truth. The story for which she put herself under the gun, that the election was stolen? Verifiably false. Count, recount, and do it again. Georgia or Michigan or Arizona, and the outcome is the same. But what if she died as a witness not to fact but to dream? The solace of the surreal, the comfort of chaos, the great relief of all the 'issues' falling away, like a body letting go, falling backward, into the Foreversville of conflict itself as the cause for which one fights. The topic--the border, guns, election integrity,' pedophiles--does not matter. Only the fight."
Sharlet is largely not comforted; he sees the numbers of people living in the "comfort of chaos" as the "slow civil war" of his subtitle. He worries, as do we all in his camp, about how much the would-be civil war soldiers can come together, how much violence they can cause, whether they can destroy our country as we have always pretended we know it. And yet, I found his forays into imagination and belief somewhat reassuring, mostly because they helped me understand the previously incomprehensible.
That last chapter my friend did recommend? It's about Lee Hays, best known as the bass voice of the Weavers, major player in the folk music explosion of the 1950s, blacklisted for "communism." The chapter goes into the little-known story of the Peekskill anti-communist riots in 1949, in which hundreds of right-wing Westchester townspeople attacked a Paul Robeson folk concert with rocks and knives, and then attacked the much-better-defended response event two weeks later with greater enmity. No points for guessing which side had police support.
The Hays essay led me down a rabbit hole (see next review), but the point I take away from Sharlet's choice to include it is that the Peekskill event was long before social media, long before political organizing with current tools and -- nonetheless -- both the concertgoers and the attackers came together, found their tribe, were able to do what they believed in, whether it was causing damage or defending against it. So what feels somewhat new to us in 2023 is not new -- except now they have AR-15s instead of rocks and knives.
If I haven't made it clear, this book is well worth your time and attention.
The Belafonte essay, "Voice and Hammer" is extraordinary. I knew a little bit about Belafonte as an activists, but nowhere near enough, and Sharlet's writing skills and passion are made for this topic. You can find the 2013 standalone essay in the Virginia Quarterly Review. Stop now and go read it.
Despite my friend's lukewarm encouragement to read the rest, I decided first, that I owed it to Jeff Sharlet to read the chapters he did so much hard physical and emotional work to write, and second, that he's an amazingly perceptive and careful writer and I wanted to know what he had to say. I was rewarded many times over.
Sharlet does two things in this book that almost no one else does or can do. First, he brings empathy and compassion to his subjects even when he is vehemently at odds with their beliefs and perceptions. As a parent of a nonbinary teenager in serious mental distress, he can still hear the voice of someone parroting anti-trans nonsense and take the person seriously without falling in line with their beliefs. I found this to be in stark contrast with Arlie Hochschild, who is often cited as the great translator of the America that fell in love with Trump to the America that didn't--but whom I find sugary and simplistic. Sharlet is neither.
The second thing he brings to this topic, which may be even more important than his empathy, is his ability to see beyond the facts to the dreams. As a lifelong writer about religion, he is conscious of and concerned about the belief systems, the ineffable concerns, the concepts that don't go into words. I don't think I've ever read anything else about my existential opponents that goes so deep and -- like everyone else who truly goes deep -- Sharlet is humble about his own role in the story.
"How to say then that Ashli Babbitt is not a martyr? There's the word itself, martyr, which means "witness," one's life given as testament to some larger truth. The story for which she put herself under the gun, that the election was stolen? Verifiably false. Count, recount, and do it again. Georgia or Michigan or Arizona, and the outcome is the same. But what if she died as a witness not to fact but to dream? The solace of the surreal, the comfort of chaos, the great relief of all the 'issues' falling away, like a body letting go, falling backward, into the Foreversville of conflict itself as the cause for which one fights. The topic--the border, guns, election integrity,' pedophiles--does not matter. Only the fight."
Sharlet is largely not comforted; he sees the numbers of people living in the "comfort of chaos" as the "slow civil war" of his subtitle. He worries, as do we all in his camp, about how much the would-be civil war soldiers can come together, how much violence they can cause, whether they can destroy our country as we have always pretended we know it. And yet, I found his forays into imagination and belief somewhat reassuring, mostly because they helped me understand the previously incomprehensible.
That last chapter my friend did recommend? It's about Lee Hays, best known as the bass voice of the Weavers, major player in the folk music explosion of the 1950s, blacklisted for "communism." The chapter goes into the little-known story of the Peekskill anti-communist riots in 1949, in which hundreds of right-wing Westchester townspeople attacked a Paul Robeson folk concert with rocks and knives, and then attacked the much-better-defended response event two weeks later with greater enmity. No points for guessing which side had police support.
The Hays essay led me down a rabbit hole (see next review), but the point I take away from Sharlet's choice to include it is that the Peekskill event was long before social media, long before political organizing with current tools and -- nonetheless -- both the concertgoers and the attackers came together, found their tribe, were able to do what they believed in, whether it was causing damage or defending against it. So what feels somewhat new to us in 2023 is not new -- except now they have AR-15s instead of rocks and knives.
If I haven't made it clear, this book is well worth your time and attention.
June 2, 2023
OK, OK, I know the denizens of the Trumpocene are angry, mean, and violent but what else is new?
WELL, I did like the naming of our age, the Trumpocene. That is pretty good.
If you are a Trump fan you will see nothing wrong about people smiling about hitting strangers , or reveling in their guns they might need for the coming civil war. And if you are not a Trump fan this book is an cascade of depressing interviews with people with no compassion and wistful about hurting non Trump fans, often in the name of religion.
I had a bunch of highlights, but what’s the point? Nothing new to see here..
BUT still here is an excerpt where he visited a pro Trump, Pro Insurrection Church…
“Inside, the first thing I noticed was the pulpit: It was made of swords. A red-hilted shaft of steel plunged into the stage, intersected midpoint by two black-hilted blades to form an upside-down triangle….
I saw no crosses. “They miss the point,” said Pastor Dave. He compared the cross, the crucifix, the method by which Jesus is believed, by those who believe, to have died for our sins, to the tender dove: weak-tea figuration that fails to convey the great breadth of ass kicked by Christ once he was risen.” | Location: 2,438
I have flirted with religion in the past but for me the temptation was the mystery of the Cross and how things flowed from that. Well that and the Beatitudes...But praising the meek is NOT what evangelicals are about now.
I guess it is good that he got in as a direct quote that the Cross and the suffering Christ is not where “the church” is today….I saw no crosses. “They miss the point,” said Pastor Dave
On the technical side...his writing got tiresome after a while. He would get on a literary roll and ended up rambling about what he saw and recording it all in a stream of consciousness sort of way.
Thin belt, dark shirt, pocket square, cufflinks shining. The screen behind him a cosmic swirl. This is the part of the service when he prophesies, a verb, rocking back and forth, holding the mike like a joint. Inhale. A woman near me screams: “Papa! I love you, Papa! Paaapaaa!” She means God. Or Hank. She collapses into the arms of the ponytailed man beside her, her body convulsing. “A release in the spirit realm,” Pastor Hank murmurs over a simmer of synth and drum. His voice deep and comic, earnest because you hear that he doesn’t need to be, that mockery is within his range. | Location: 3,095
A little interesting, but dang there is so much of it that it wears me down. It’s not reporting, not analysis, not context...just sort of a book version of Cinéma vérité, in that he records it all, with warts and all, BUT you “know” what the message is. I get it. I agree with him. But as a style, it just didn’t work for me.
For something completely different, at the end of the book he goes into the folk singers The Weavers… that was OK, but just OK. However this one line stood out, and I don’t know that it really applied to his book mission statement some retold advice from Leadbelly about songs and song ownership is kind of revolutionary..
Leadbelly taught Pete what Lee already knew: “authenticity” was a trap, purity was a dead end, no song belonged wholly to anyone. Pass the song along, he told the White boys. | Location: 4,458
Just a wildly different view from this age of people suing over who has “rights” to a tune.
WELL, I did like the naming of our age, the Trumpocene. That is pretty good.
If you are a Trump fan you will see nothing wrong about people smiling about hitting strangers , or reveling in their guns they might need for the coming civil war. And if you are not a Trump fan this book is an cascade of depressing interviews with people with no compassion and wistful about hurting non Trump fans, often in the name of religion.
I had a bunch of highlights, but what’s the point? Nothing new to see here..
BUT still here is an excerpt where he visited a pro Trump, Pro Insurrection Church…
“Inside, the first thing I noticed was the pulpit: It was made of swords. A red-hilted shaft of steel plunged into the stage, intersected midpoint by two black-hilted blades to form an upside-down triangle….
I saw no crosses. “They miss the point,” said Pastor Dave. He compared the cross, the crucifix, the method by which Jesus is believed, by those who believe, to have died for our sins, to the tender dove: weak-tea figuration that fails to convey the great breadth of ass kicked by Christ once he was risen.” | Location: 2,438
I have flirted with religion in the past but for me the temptation was the mystery of the Cross and how things flowed from that. Well that and the Beatitudes...But praising the meek is NOT what evangelicals are about now.
I guess it is good that he got in as a direct quote that the Cross and the suffering Christ is not where “the church” is today….I saw no crosses. “They miss the point,” said Pastor Dave
On the technical side...his writing got tiresome after a while. He would get on a literary roll and ended up rambling about what he saw and recording it all in a stream of consciousness sort of way.
Thin belt, dark shirt, pocket square, cufflinks shining. The screen behind him a cosmic swirl. This is the part of the service when he prophesies, a verb, rocking back and forth, holding the mike like a joint. Inhale. A woman near me screams: “Papa! I love you, Papa! Paaapaaa!” She means God. Or Hank. She collapses into the arms of the ponytailed man beside her, her body convulsing. “A release in the spirit realm,” Pastor Hank murmurs over a simmer of synth and drum. His voice deep and comic, earnest because you hear that he doesn’t need to be, that mockery is within his range. | Location: 3,095
A little interesting, but dang there is so much of it that it wears me down. It’s not reporting, not analysis, not context...just sort of a book version of Cinéma vérité, in that he records it all, with warts and all, BUT you “know” what the message is. I get it. I agree with him. But as a style, it just didn’t work for me.
For something completely different, at the end of the book he goes into the folk singers The Weavers… that was OK, but just OK. However this one line stood out, and I don’t know that it really applied to his book mission statement some retold advice from Leadbelly about songs and song ownership is kind of revolutionary..
Leadbelly taught Pete what Lee already knew: “authenticity” was a trap, purity was a dead end, no song belonged wholly to anyone. Pass the song along, he told the White boys. | Location: 4,458
Just a wildly different view from this age of people suing over who has “rights” to a tune.
August 20, 2023
I really do like Sharlet's writing and his chutzpah in interviewing hundreds of people on the far right for this book must be commended. He is non-judgmental in this book. So much so that at times I had to remind myself that he was being an objective reporter in spite of the nonsense he was sometimes being fed. He definitely humanized the people he met.
As far as the book, there are ten loosely overlapping chapters relating primarily to MAGA and white nationalists. I found the chapters on Ashley Babbitt and the Peekskill Riot of 1949 to be the best.
He is such a good writer, though I wish he'd write more history. Sometimes even well written current event books like this one don't have the distance or arc (in time) to be great books.
I really was enthralled by the Peekskill Riots and for the life of me can't believe that I knew absolutely nothing of this history.
Many of the chapters in the book are based on interviews the author had with people in Wisconsin which is a purple state but deeply divided. I remember driving out West from Michigan through the U.P. and northern Wisconsin in October 2016. The scenery was beautiful and the fall foliage was still in color, which is why I went this route. But I was unprepared for all the MAGA and Trump signs. I saw only one Hillary sign across several hundred miles of driving. I knew at that moment that the election was not going to end well. This book is more recent but largely along the same demographics.
4 stars. The writing was closer to 5 stars.
As far as the book, there are ten loosely overlapping chapters relating primarily to MAGA and white nationalists. I found the chapters on Ashley Babbitt and the Peekskill Riot of 1949 to be the best.
He is such a good writer, though I wish he'd write more history. Sometimes even well written current event books like this one don't have the distance or arc (in time) to be great books.
I really was enthralled by the Peekskill Riots and for the life of me can't believe that I knew absolutely nothing of this history.
Many of the chapters in the book are based on interviews the author had with people in Wisconsin which is a purple state but deeply divided. I remember driving out West from Michigan through the U.P. and northern Wisconsin in October 2016. The scenery was beautiful and the fall foliage was still in color, which is why I went this route. But I was unprepared for all the MAGA and Trump signs. I saw only one Hillary sign across several hundred miles of driving. I knew at that moment that the election was not going to end well. This book is more recent but largely along the same demographics.
4 stars. The writing was closer to 5 stars.
May 23, 2023
“There is no point, just absurdity sprawling across the dead map of American myth.” -some kind of summary of The Big Lebowski in this book, Ashli Babbitt’s favorite movie. Ironically also exactly how I felt about this book.
It’s an interesting road trip across America, in which Sharlet talks to a bunch of far-right whackadoodles who think that Trump is a fulfillment of prophecy and are way too attached to their guns. It’s terrifying to know that these people exist.
But what of it? As far as I could tell, the author never analyzed these anecdotes whatsoever. How representative of the right wing are these people? Is some kind of civil war imminent, or are they blowing smoke? Are there normal people on the right, who would disavow being represented by these folks? And if they do exist, what are the proportions? We’ll never know any of these things, because Sharlet only gives us a bunch of anecdotal personal experiences, and I think he wants us to infer that the entire Republican Party is like this. Or something. I wish I could say what he wants us to think, but he never tells us.
This book earned its second star by having genuinely interesting anecdotes about some pockets of the right wing found scattered across the country. I just have no idea what he wanted us to get from that, so in all it was a disappointment.
It’s an interesting road trip across America, in which Sharlet talks to a bunch of far-right whackadoodles who think that Trump is a fulfillment of prophecy and are way too attached to their guns. It’s terrifying to know that these people exist.
But what of it? As far as I could tell, the author never analyzed these anecdotes whatsoever. How representative of the right wing are these people? Is some kind of civil war imminent, or are they blowing smoke? Are there normal people on the right, who would disavow being represented by these folks? And if they do exist, what are the proportions? We’ll never know any of these things, because Sharlet only gives us a bunch of anecdotal personal experiences, and I think he wants us to infer that the entire Republican Party is like this. Or something. I wish I could say what he wants us to think, but he never tells us.
This book earned its second star by having genuinely interesting anecdotes about some pockets of the right wing found scattered across the country. I just have no idea what he wanted us to get from that, so in all it was a disappointment.
April 18, 2023
The essays in this book ranged in quality; I particularly liked the first and last but was less impressed by the by the title essay, which comprises the longest section in the book. I thought some of Sharlet's musings were insightful but I think his thesis as illustrated by the subtitle speaks to the adage "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail." If you deliberately seek out the most conspiracy-minded and violent people in America then of course they're going to tell you that Civil War is imminent, but that still doesn't mean they're anything more than a fringe group with a particularly loud voice. After a decadeslong lull it's troubling that political violence has increased with the rise of Trumpism, but the idea that we're on the were of some kind of "great divorce" type event is laughable.
March 22, 2025
This was the strangest reading experiences I've ever had. Not the strangest book but how I at first did not connect with the book at all to becoming low key obsessed over it. This review might be more about me than the book...
So, I started this in November 2024, in hindsight that was a stupid choice. Some might say 'obviously'. Maybe it was that last bit of hope in me that decided to pick up a book that reflects on the current political and societal turmoil, thinking that maybe when I engage with the situation people wouldn't let me down. But of course they did and of course I put the book down for months. But honestly, the first set of essays didn't really do it for me. Some people love how this collection bookends itself with 2 essays each about a historical celebrity (it's almost a biographical piece in both cases) with looks on society and racism throughout time. I found that weird and not en par with the rest. I mean, it sort of connects but also not. In the other chapters Sharlet travels through the US talking to people from different groups that are all somewhere on the right end of the political spectrum and Trump supporters but often for differing reasons. It has his distinctive voice (which one has to get used to) and it is a look at and beyond what this country is right now.
And that's the element that gradually won me over. That and being 2 months into this Trump administration. I was pretty much ready to dnf, I hadn't felt any pull to come back to this after I stopped reading around chapter 5, about 100 pages in. So far I felt like this book wasn't giving me anything new, that I already knew about the terrible people that for very selfish or very misinformed or very willfully, selfishly misinformed reasons felt the way they felt and voted this country into its downfall. I thought this book was simply regurgitating. But this book is not that shallow. Or rather, my mindset changed with our down spiral. We are now in March of 2025 and the government has kicked its autocracy game plan into gear. We are getting daily news of people's right being kicked and beaten, judge's orders ignored and attempts to rewrite recent history (Ukraine!). Parallel to that more and more stories are emerging of Trump supporters regretting their choice because 'this is not what they signed up for'. As in, really? But this review shouldn't be about the discontent I have for these people and their selfish ignorance. Most personally hitting was seeing Green Card holders being stripped off their rights and their status. I am a green card holder who is opposing this government and most of what it stands for.
That was the backdrop of the moment when I wanted to take this book off my currently reading list because I felt like nothing could get me back here to continue. I was mostly reading for escapism at this point in time. But with the escalating news something had shifted within me. Since I didn't know how to fight what's going on (and don't tell me to call my congress man, come on now, what is that going to change!), my mind turned back to books. And I literally picked the physical book up to write a dnf review but instead I read the next essay. And then the next. And the next. And suddenly this book made sense to me, suddenly it elevated the situation we were in into something more tangible. So instead of a dnf, I became obsessed and finished it within a week.
What does this book do? To me it is Sharlet's own attempt at understanding, maybe finding ways to stop the trajectory. It is a document of our times, as the subtitles hints at, our road towards civil war and these are its scenes. It gives context and puts bigger and smaller picture impressions side by side. It even tries to bring up compassion occasionally but mostly it shows the harsh truth of what people out there are like. From religious outliers that believe their wealth is a reward from God and therefor Trump is the Messiah, to Men's Rights groups that think society is coming for them and they want their dominant status back, to MAGA rallyers that project onto Trump whatever serves their own agendas. The connection between guns and religion, guns and fears, guns and power. So many guns. The post truth people creating their own realities, conspiracies that are more convenient than reality. White supremacy, WHITE WHITE WHITE and how none of this is fringe any longer. I had several epiphanies while reading but the realization that these people are not extremists but the mainstream at this point was the biggest one.
And I needed to hear that and let it settle in. I needed to understand that my fears weren't unfounded, that this country and likely the world is on a certain terrifying track now. It was shocking to see how many of the right is practically yearning for a civil war, is living in militias and activist groups that are getting ready to create a new world in their image. They might have differing reasons and differing motivators but it all boils down to the same.
This book definitely scared me because the country is scary now. It made me sad and enraged. I read about a man's rights activist who told his own daughter after she was assaulted that he would disown her if she pressed charges because men don't rape, men are the victims and women the assaulters who fabricate everything. I read about people who think they are on a crusade to rescue children that the left traffics and sometimes eats, sometimes sacrifices to demons and sometimes simply abuses, depending on which conspiracy believer you talk to. I read about a woman who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6th and was shot and was now turned into a martyr, an innocent angel, by priests and worshipers. I read about a man who thinks abortion should be illegal because women are getting rid of his future soldiers for that civil war that's coming, or the war with China, or any war.
The essay that really turned me around on this book is the longest and titular one, "The Undertow". If you read only one thing from this book, make it that one. This book turned into an experience, a reflection that often precisely knew back in 2021/ 2o22 that we would exactly end up where we are right now. That things will likely get worse. Because these people are out there dictating the currents. Brave new world indeed.
To finish up, some quotes:
"Diane was not fringe. She might have been closer to the new center of American life than you are."
"Child-sacrificing elites, not just pedophiles, harvesters of children's adrenal glands for an evil concoction one part Botox and two parts blood libel.
Do I need to say that none of this is true? Would it matter?"
"They wanted to believe [...] an implicit promise of Whiteness offered to people of color willing to collaborate with White supremacy. This bait-and-switch - the promise of Whiteness is by definition unfulfillable - may be the next American contribution to fascism."
"How does democracy dissolve? It subsides."
"That is the great truth of paranoia now. Not knowing. Not needing to know. Not knowing as its own dim, dreaming certainty."
"Abortion and guns and God and Whiteness and women and cities and borders and then guns again. The intersectionality of fascism: all perceived threats, across all time. Brutally interconnected."
"It's getting harder, they said, to think up happy endings." (said by a Trans kid about abortion rights being demolished)
"The murder of George Floyd and the demonstrations, that opened their eyes to the state of things - but it didn't take off because it's Black people. This - the fall of Roe - probably isn't going to take off, because it's women. But when something happens to a White man?
They ban golf, said Karen. We all laughed.
They ban golf, agreed Paige, and that's when the revolution starts."
So, I started this in November 2024, in hindsight that was a stupid choice. Some might say 'obviously'. Maybe it was that last bit of hope in me that decided to pick up a book that reflects on the current political and societal turmoil, thinking that maybe when I engage with the situation people wouldn't let me down. But of course they did and of course I put the book down for months. But honestly, the first set of essays didn't really do it for me. Some people love how this collection bookends itself with 2 essays each about a historical celebrity (it's almost a biographical piece in both cases) with looks on society and racism throughout time. I found that weird and not en par with the rest. I mean, it sort of connects but also not. In the other chapters Sharlet travels through the US talking to people from different groups that are all somewhere on the right end of the political spectrum and Trump supporters but often for differing reasons. It has his distinctive voice (which one has to get used to) and it is a look at and beyond what this country is right now.
And that's the element that gradually won me over. That and being 2 months into this Trump administration. I was pretty much ready to dnf, I hadn't felt any pull to come back to this after I stopped reading around chapter 5, about 100 pages in. So far I felt like this book wasn't giving me anything new, that I already knew about the terrible people that for very selfish or very misinformed or very willfully, selfishly misinformed reasons felt the way they felt and voted this country into its downfall. I thought this book was simply regurgitating. But this book is not that shallow. Or rather, my mindset changed with our down spiral. We are now in March of 2025 and the government has kicked its autocracy game plan into gear. We are getting daily news of people's right being kicked and beaten, judge's orders ignored and attempts to rewrite recent history (Ukraine!). Parallel to that more and more stories are emerging of Trump supporters regretting their choice because 'this is not what they signed up for'. As in, really? But this review shouldn't be about the discontent I have for these people and their selfish ignorance. Most personally hitting was seeing Green Card holders being stripped off their rights and their status. I am a green card holder who is opposing this government and most of what it stands for.
That was the backdrop of the moment when I wanted to take this book off my currently reading list because I felt like nothing could get me back here to continue. I was mostly reading for escapism at this point in time. But with the escalating news something had shifted within me. Since I didn't know how to fight what's going on (and don't tell me to call my congress man, come on now, what is that going to change!), my mind turned back to books. And I literally picked the physical book up to write a dnf review but instead I read the next essay. And then the next. And the next. And suddenly this book made sense to me, suddenly it elevated the situation we were in into something more tangible. So instead of a dnf, I became obsessed and finished it within a week.
What does this book do? To me it is Sharlet's own attempt at understanding, maybe finding ways to stop the trajectory. It is a document of our times, as the subtitles hints at, our road towards civil war and these are its scenes. It gives context and puts bigger and smaller picture impressions side by side. It even tries to bring up compassion occasionally but mostly it shows the harsh truth of what people out there are like. From religious outliers that believe their wealth is a reward from God and therefor Trump is the Messiah, to Men's Rights groups that think society is coming for them and they want their dominant status back, to MAGA rallyers that project onto Trump whatever serves their own agendas. The connection between guns and religion, guns and fears, guns and power. So many guns. The post truth people creating their own realities, conspiracies that are more convenient than reality. White supremacy, WHITE WHITE WHITE and how none of this is fringe any longer. I had several epiphanies while reading but the realization that these people are not extremists but the mainstream at this point was the biggest one.
And I needed to hear that and let it settle in. I needed to understand that my fears weren't unfounded, that this country and likely the world is on a certain terrifying track now. It was shocking to see how many of the right is practically yearning for a civil war, is living in militias and activist groups that are getting ready to create a new world in their image. They might have differing reasons and differing motivators but it all boils down to the same.
This book definitely scared me because the country is scary now. It made me sad and enraged. I read about a man's rights activist who told his own daughter after she was assaulted that he would disown her if she pressed charges because men don't rape, men are the victims and women the assaulters who fabricate everything. I read about people who think they are on a crusade to rescue children that the left traffics and sometimes eats, sometimes sacrifices to demons and sometimes simply abuses, depending on which conspiracy believer you talk to. I read about a woman who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6th and was shot and was now turned into a martyr, an innocent angel, by priests and worshipers. I read about a man who thinks abortion should be illegal because women are getting rid of his future soldiers for that civil war that's coming, or the war with China, or any war.
The essay that really turned me around on this book is the longest and titular one, "The Undertow". If you read only one thing from this book, make it that one. This book turned into an experience, a reflection that often precisely knew back in 2021/ 2o22 that we would exactly end up where we are right now. That things will likely get worse. Because these people are out there dictating the currents. Brave new world indeed.
To finish up, some quotes:
"Diane was not fringe. She might have been closer to the new center of American life than you are."
"Child-sacrificing elites, not just pedophiles, harvesters of children's adrenal glands for an evil concoction one part Botox and two parts blood libel.
Do I need to say that none of this is true? Would it matter?"
"They wanted to believe [...] an implicit promise of Whiteness offered to people of color willing to collaborate with White supremacy. This bait-and-switch - the promise of Whiteness is by definition unfulfillable - may be the next American contribution to fascism."
"How does democracy dissolve? It subsides."
"That is the great truth of paranoia now. Not knowing. Not needing to know. Not knowing as its own dim, dreaming certainty."
"Abortion and guns and God and Whiteness and women and cities and borders and then guns again. The intersectionality of fascism: all perceived threats, across all time. Brutally interconnected."
"It's getting harder, they said, to think up happy endings." (said by a Trans kid about abortion rights being demolished)
"The murder of George Floyd and the demonstrations, that opened their eyes to the state of things - but it didn't take off because it's Black people. This - the fall of Roe - probably isn't going to take off, because it's women. But when something happens to a White man?
They ban golf, said Karen. We all laughed.
They ban golf, agreed Paige, and that's when the revolution starts."
April 27, 2023
Hard to remember when I last read journalism of this quality. Stunning stuff. Leaving it a bit shell shocked.
Edit, after a few hours of reflection:
Sharlet is one of those writers that will leave you breathless. As he informs and reports happenings, he’s planting a network of symbols and metaphor below the surface. Every now and again I’d lose track of all his breadcrumbs, then get slapped on the face when he brought the back to hammer home his point.
He’s an expert in religious movements and far-right ideologies, two fields whose middle portion of their Venn diagram has grown exponentially in the last decade (this is a clunky sentence but I know you know what I mean so I’m not redoing it). As I read, it was impressed upon me how fitting the term “slow civil war” actually is. I don’t know if we’ll get to the point of lines being drawn in the sand with an actual war taking place. But there’s very clearly a rolling boil underneath our thinning veneer of a unified society. Sharlet is so skilled at honoring and showcasing vignettes from this boiling over. He respects his subjects and doesn’t belittle them. He critiques them, but he acknowledges the real emotions they have and doesn’t undermine them. I respect that.
Everyone should read it.
Edit, after a few hours of reflection:
Sharlet is one of those writers that will leave you breathless. As he informs and reports happenings, he’s planting a network of symbols and metaphor below the surface. Every now and again I’d lose track of all his breadcrumbs, then get slapped on the face when he brought the back to hammer home his point.
He’s an expert in religious movements and far-right ideologies, two fields whose middle portion of their Venn diagram has grown exponentially in the last decade (this is a clunky sentence but I know you know what I mean so I’m not redoing it). As I read, it was impressed upon me how fitting the term “slow civil war” actually is. I don’t know if we’ll get to the point of lines being drawn in the sand with an actual war taking place. But there’s very clearly a rolling boil underneath our thinning veneer of a unified society. Sharlet is so skilled at honoring and showcasing vignettes from this boiling over. He respects his subjects and doesn’t belittle them. He critiques them, but he acknowledges the real emotions they have and doesn’t undermine them. I respect that.
Everyone should read it.
Read
February 15, 2025This took me a while to read because I wasn't a fan of the writing style, so YMMV. The author narrates what people have told him on his journey through the country. I wanted more facts on why he chose the places he chose, why he undertook this journey, more details on the timeline of it all. It was still informative but not my favorite on trumpism, there was a lack of analysis to me. It is snapshots of short meetings of people getting ready for a civil war.
November 24, 2023
This book was an immense disappointment.
Directionless, navel-gazing, and maddeningly incurious, The Undertow seemed to have no discernible thesis. At best, I'd describe it as a rambling and shallow exploration the increasingly schizophrenic and fascistic landscape of American politics. This exploration consists a collection of anecdotal interviews with MAGA hat wearing, QANON-believing members of the working class to whom we, as Sharlet's enlightened liberal audience, are expected to react with horror and disdain. Recurrent themes of these interviews include a deep-seated opposition to civic institutions, increasingly hostile mistrust of the Other (namely immigrants and Jews), and continual preparation for the coming eschaton.
Why are so many members of this working class embracing such reactionary ideas that are clearly not in their best interest? I dunno. Sharlet doesn't really delve too deeply into it. Vibes I guess? Dezinformatsia? Something something Gnosticism and Trump's Machiavellian art of manipulation? Nowhere in the pages of this book is any materialist analysis for this phenomenon forwarded. To Sharlet and countless other members of his socio-political class, the calendar still reads 2016.
Political contestation simply boils down to the competition of ideologies in the marketplace of ideas, where the most convincing and alluring ones rise to the top. The vast hordes of white trash in middle America could never hold their beliefs for concrete, tangible reasons. As such, a program of transformative social change and economic redistribution would have no hope of fundamentally undermining the appeal of such evil ideas. Or so they would have you believe.
Sharlet proposes no way out of our country's dire predicament. But the beauty of books like this is that he doesn't need to. Like so many other journalists have done over the past several years, he can just keep throwing red meat like this to his PMC audience and continue to get published. Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well, unfortunately.
The introduction was absolutely captivating though. His extended interview with Harry Belafonte was some of the best hauntological writing I've ever read.
Directionless, navel-gazing, and maddeningly incurious, The Undertow seemed to have no discernible thesis. At best, I'd describe it as a rambling and shallow exploration the increasingly schizophrenic and fascistic landscape of American politics. This exploration consists a collection of anecdotal interviews with MAGA hat wearing, QANON-believing members of the working class to whom we, as Sharlet's enlightened liberal audience, are expected to react with horror and disdain. Recurrent themes of these interviews include a deep-seated opposition to civic institutions, increasingly hostile mistrust of the Other (namely immigrants and Jews), and continual preparation for the coming eschaton.
Why are so many members of this working class embracing such reactionary ideas that are clearly not in their best interest? I dunno. Sharlet doesn't really delve too deeply into it. Vibes I guess? Dezinformatsia? Something something Gnosticism and Trump's Machiavellian art of manipulation? Nowhere in the pages of this book is any materialist analysis for this phenomenon forwarded. To Sharlet and countless other members of his socio-political class, the calendar still reads 2016.
Political contestation simply boils down to the competition of ideologies in the marketplace of ideas, where the most convincing and alluring ones rise to the top. The vast hordes of white trash in middle America could never hold their beliefs for concrete, tangible reasons. As such, a program of transformative social change and economic redistribution would have no hope of fundamentally undermining the appeal of such evil ideas. Or so they would have you believe.
Sharlet proposes no way out of our country's dire predicament. But the beauty of books like this is that he doesn't need to. Like so many other journalists have done over the past several years, he can just keep throwing red meat like this to his PMC audience and continue to get published. Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well, unfortunately.
The introduction was absolutely captivating though. His extended interview with Harry Belafonte was some of the best hauntological writing I've ever read.
March 25, 2023
Just started, sooooooooooo good!
Will update with a full review once I’m done.
Will update with a full review once I’m done.
May 2, 2023
I wanted to like this, but ultimately just found it long winded and overly poetic. But yeah, I think we’re fucked lol
February 16, 2025
Sharlet basically took a road trip during which he met, interviewed, and tried to understand (not excuse!) the thinking of various conspiracists, Christian nationalists, and general RWNJs.
The opening chapter reached too hard for what I guess I'd call a philosophical take, to the detriment of the direct analysis I'd have preferred. I persisted (sorry) and eventually warmed to the book -- the prose got less strained as it went along, and I was deeply impressed by the courage it took just to approach some of these people. Who the hell comes to the door with a gun? Some of Sharlet's interviewees, that's who.
Sharlet doesn't go for big-picture analysis but rather for deeper insight into individuals; I wouldn't, however, class this with those tiresome "Trump voters in a ~heartland~ diner" interview pieces: that word "deeper" tells you why. Also, the people he profiles are not so much loudmouth ignoramuses as they are straight-up fanatics. They're way past being misinformed; they live in a bizarro world constructed from racism, conspiratorial thinking, and fear. The Venn diagram of their "reality" and, you know, reality barely overlaps.
And, God, they are so afraid -- see "Who the hell comes to the door with a gun?," above. I wonder how far that fearfulness of "strangers" goes to explain their hostility toward cities: that is, cities are frightening and alien because in the RW imaginary they're full of nothing but hostile strangers, yes, but also many of us who live in cities outwardly resemble the RWNJs who hate cities, and maybe that implies something even more disturbing about us than about the people who don't outwardly resemble them. We look like them, yet we live, apparently contentedly, among the terrifying aliens, so are we, I don't know, wolves in sheeps' clothing? Lizard People? rootless cosmopolitans ... Jews?
But I have strayed from Sharlet himself. The tl;dr is that this is not the book to go to for the history of the delusional right wing, or for intellectual analysis. Read it for the sake of its close observation of how particular politically delusional minds work.
The opening chapter reached too hard for what I guess I'd call a philosophical take, to the detriment of the direct analysis I'd have preferred. I persisted (sorry) and eventually warmed to the book -- the prose got less strained as it went along, and I was deeply impressed by the courage it took just to approach some of these people. Who the hell comes to the door with a gun? Some of Sharlet's interviewees, that's who.
Sharlet doesn't go for big-picture analysis but rather for deeper insight into individuals; I wouldn't, however, class this with those tiresome "Trump voters in a ~heartland~ diner" interview pieces: that word "deeper" tells you why. Also, the people he profiles are not so much loudmouth ignoramuses as they are straight-up fanatics. They're way past being misinformed; they live in a bizarro world constructed from racism, conspiratorial thinking, and fear. The Venn diagram of their "reality" and, you know, reality barely overlaps.
And, God, they are so afraid -- see "Who the hell comes to the door with a gun?," above. I wonder how far that fearfulness of "strangers" goes to explain their hostility toward cities: that is, cities are frightening and alien because in the RW imaginary they're full of nothing but hostile strangers, yes, but also many of us who live in cities outwardly resemble the RWNJs who hate cities, and maybe that implies something even more disturbing about us than about the people who don't outwardly resemble them. We look like them, yet we live, apparently contentedly, among the terrifying aliens, so are we, I don't know, wolves in sheeps' clothing? Lizard People? rootless cosmopolitans ... Jews?
But I have strayed from Sharlet himself. The tl;dr is that this is not the book to go to for the history of the delusional right wing, or for intellectual analysis. Read it for the sake of its close observation of how particular politically delusional minds work.
June 7, 2023
Sharlet dips his writerly ladle in the stew of American neo-facism and comes up with some thin gruel.
I'm not sure he understood the assignment. He certainly tries. He grasps for answers to impossible questions at roadside tent revivals, and I feel, as his reader, like I'm waiting outside the tent with the car engine running: "Ugh what is he still doing in that tent? Don't we have more important places to get to?"
We apparently do not.
This short review has far too many metaphors in it, but maybe that's because I just read "The Undertow". Sharlet's a competent writer who wrote a lame, over-written nothingbook.
I'm not sure he understood the assignment. He certainly tries. He grasps for answers to impossible questions at roadside tent revivals, and I feel, as his reader, like I'm waiting outside the tent with the car engine running: "Ugh what is he still doing in that tent? Don't we have more important places to get to?"
We apparently do not.
This short review has far too many metaphors in it, but maybe that's because I just read "The Undertow". Sharlet's a competent writer who wrote a lame, over-written nothingbook.
July 1, 2023
Maybe I should have waited until this content wasn’t just current events and I had more distance from the craziness of the past several years. The author reported on people who have been misled by conspiracy theories and people manipulating their thought processes. But the collection of essays isn’t much more than reporting events and recording discussions. He never built a theme or connected his experiences. I didn’t get a better sense of how or why our country is messed up or how the discourse can be resolved.
January 26, 2024
Quite simply, one of the best books I've ever read. It is definitely the best current events (my term even though the book is labeled as sociology) book I've read. My previous favorite would have been "American Theocracy" by Kevin Phillips (a book that was my first real warning about the dangers of Christian fanaticism; a warning that I knowingly ignored just three years later when I started my time as a conservative Christian until I shook myself out of that stupor with seven years lost) and this book is a fitful inheritor of that title.
I don't think the book summary provided by the publisher (or the author, since he very well could have written it) is all that helpful to knowing just what this book is about. The subtitle, "Scenes from a Slow Civil War," gives you a strong hint but, if you don't think about it too much, you could just excuse it as hyperbole. It is not hyperbole. This book does what nothing else I've consumed (articles, other books, documentaries, etc.) has been capable of capturing. This is the terrifying America that we live in now, in 2024. It is the America that has been simmering under the surface (just ever so barely, even at the best of times) for all the decades I've been alive (plus some). This is about the fascism that grips this country.
Sharlet tells the story of everyday American fascism (and I realize how ludicrous it is to say this after what I just wrote) beautifully. His writing is like nothing else I have ever encountered in non-fiction. It is lyrical. It is sweeping. It consumes. Rick Perlstein (the author of "Nixonland" and my favorite historian) writes in a similarly captivating way but with a a different literary style. Both writers are great and do a fantastic job of honestly telling their stories while making it all feel as real as it is. It's also fitting that I love this book so much because I only heard about it (despite it being a New York Times Bestseller that I somehow never heard of) from tweets of Perlstein.
This book is not lighthearted. There is no silver lining or uplifting message. I picked this book up because I read something about it (after hearing about from Perlstein) that said it also provided hope. I didn't want to read another book that only partially got our times right and captured the people that I knew that were embroiled in this national nightmare. If I was going to read another current events books I didn't want to just get depressed by what condition we were in. I wanted to gain something that might help guide me through this. That's what I wanted. What I envisioned was the self-help guide to my own personal fight against fascism guide. My hope was quenched, but not in the way that I envisioned. I do have hope but that hope is in the truth that this is not the first time America has faced this nightmare. It might be the last but that's okay. Things come and go. There are ebbs and flows of all things. Humans (so far) have endured the fallout and then try again. There will be times of absolute horror at our door. We are in one of those times now, and it could get even worse. But the collective we of humanity have been through this before. We will make it through. We will be different but we will get through. There will be hell in-between because we're already at the door now, with a foot hovering just over the entrance to take us on our first step in. But there will be a time after. We might not see it. What comes next might last for four years, four decades, or four hours on election night. We don't know. I sure as fuck don't know. But there will be a what's next. That's the hope. There will be a next and that's what we can dream for as we fight through the now.
I don't think the book summary provided by the publisher (or the author, since he very well could have written it) is all that helpful to knowing just what this book is about. The subtitle, "Scenes from a Slow Civil War," gives you a strong hint but, if you don't think about it too much, you could just excuse it as hyperbole. It is not hyperbole. This book does what nothing else I've consumed (articles, other books, documentaries, etc.) has been capable of capturing. This is the terrifying America that we live in now, in 2024. It is the America that has been simmering under the surface (just ever so barely, even at the best of times) for all the decades I've been alive (plus some). This is about the fascism that grips this country.
Sharlet tells the story of everyday American fascism (and I realize how ludicrous it is to say this after what I just wrote) beautifully. His writing is like nothing else I have ever encountered in non-fiction. It is lyrical. It is sweeping. It consumes. Rick Perlstein (the author of "Nixonland" and my favorite historian) writes in a similarly captivating way but with a a different literary style. Both writers are great and do a fantastic job of honestly telling their stories while making it all feel as real as it is. It's also fitting that I love this book so much because I only heard about it (despite it being a New York Times Bestseller that I somehow never heard of) from tweets of Perlstein.
This book is not lighthearted. There is no silver lining or uplifting message. I picked this book up because I read something about it (after hearing about from Perlstein) that said it also provided hope. I didn't want to read another book that only partially got our times right and captured the people that I knew that were embroiled in this national nightmare. If I was going to read another current events books I didn't want to just get depressed by what condition we were in. I wanted to gain something that might help guide me through this. That's what I wanted. What I envisioned was the self-help guide to my own personal fight against fascism guide. My hope was quenched, but not in the way that I envisioned. I do have hope but that hope is in the truth that this is not the first time America has faced this nightmare. It might be the last but that's okay. Things come and go. There are ebbs and flows of all things. Humans (so far) have endured the fallout and then try again. There will be times of absolute horror at our door. We are in one of those times now, and it could get even worse. But the collective we of humanity have been through this before. We will make it through. We will be different but we will get through. There will be hell in-between because we're already at the door now, with a foot hovering just over the entrance to take us on our first step in. But there will be a time after. We might not see it. What comes next might last for four years, four decades, or four hours on election night. We don't know. I sure as fuck don't know. But there will be a what's next. That's the hope. There will be a next and that's what we can dream for as we fight through the now.
July 11, 2023
Jeff Sharlet tells a powerfully and sensitively narrated story mingling among neofascist folks while touring America. He easily interacts with everyday folks and listens to their stories that illuminate why so many fear our divisiveness. His story about the songbook “Darling Corley” is especially powerful. He says, “If you have ever wondered what the Left once was in America [aka 1955] — the Old Left that organized American labor and gave rise to the Black revolt that would grow into Black Power, and fought fascists in Spain in 1936 and in Peekskill in 1949, and was killed by committee just a few years later — listen to “Darling Corley,” as the Weavers sang it in 1955.”
By touring the country and immersing himself and sharing the shocking stories of those involved with January 6, attraction to QAnon, and celebration among fascist “intellectuals” aiming to “Yes, let’s leave democracy behind,” Sharlot uncovers the fears and threatening reactions underlying this neo-fascist movement. By incorporating numerous stories of people in our most remote areas of our country readers inevitably acquire a new and better understanding of the motivations underlying these neofascist trends. He asks “How does democracy dissolve? It subsides.” In sum, Sharlot offers an in-depth but engaging read that sheds light on these seemingly impossible challenges. Sharlet also illuminates why so many young people live in fear of neofascism to the point that they are arming themselves. Sharlet interviewed several young adults who shared that their fears motivated them to purchase guns potentially for self-defense. They felt hopeless that anyone would protect them. This is a well-written and innovative read about the divides that currently threaten everyone and has evoked fear and pessimism in all of us. Our leaders carry on their daily tasks ignoring the potentially dire consequences that affect all Americans who must clumsily navigate these tensions without any guidance or recognition of the seriousness of our divide. Despite the somberness of the book’s focus I appreciated the book’s inclusion of interviews with “everyday folks”, and in particular working class adults who shared with Sharlet the struggles they experienced daily. Only by understanding the motives underlying our divisions will we know how to intervene and improve the current climate.
By touring the country and immersing himself and sharing the shocking stories of those involved with January 6, attraction to QAnon, and celebration among fascist “intellectuals” aiming to “Yes, let’s leave democracy behind,” Sharlot uncovers the fears and threatening reactions underlying this neo-fascist movement. By incorporating numerous stories of people in our most remote areas of our country readers inevitably acquire a new and better understanding of the motivations underlying these neofascist trends. He asks “How does democracy dissolve? It subsides.” In sum, Sharlot offers an in-depth but engaging read that sheds light on these seemingly impossible challenges. Sharlet also illuminates why so many young people live in fear of neofascism to the point that they are arming themselves. Sharlet interviewed several young adults who shared that their fears motivated them to purchase guns potentially for self-defense. They felt hopeless that anyone would protect them. This is a well-written and innovative read about the divides that currently threaten everyone and has evoked fear and pessimism in all of us. Our leaders carry on their daily tasks ignoring the potentially dire consequences that affect all Americans who must clumsily navigate these tensions without any guidance or recognition of the seriousness of our divide. Despite the somberness of the book’s focus I appreciated the book’s inclusion of interviews with “everyday folks”, and in particular working class adults who shared with Sharlet the struggles they experienced daily. Only by understanding the motives underlying our divisions will we know how to intervene and improve the current climate.
May 2, 2025
This book was not at all what I expected it to be, but in the best way possible. The writing was much more poetic than I expected. I found this on a podcast, and from the sounds of it, I thought it would be a classic “the rise of the authoritarian right”, “how crazy is Q anon”, “guns are wacky” book. There were elements of it. But it treated it with far more beauty (not in a glorifying way, in a writing way) than I expected.. I was deeply surprised in a pleasant way with this book, and want to read his others.
December 16, 2023
Sharlet is a talented, engaging writer of creative non-fiction. And there's the rub.In most of these essays, he embeds himself in far right communities - churches, QAnon and Trump rallies, MRA meets. There are shocking exchanges here, but likely cherry picked and designed to shock. How representative are these folk? Have they always been here? The last, brilliant essay on the early folk singers was eye opening and seemed to suggest, yes.
October 26, 2024
Bookended by chapters about Belafonte and the Weavers, this book describes a roadtrip across the United States punctuated by photographs and visits to white nationalist churches, QAnon believers, gun nuts and Trump supporters following the election of Biden in 2020.
June 14, 2023
This is a sobering report on American attitudes roiling in the religious and political spectrum across the country today. Skinny, 50 year old Sharlet, downing his heart ailment pills, drives across the country in an attempt to understand the intense beliefs that are working to pull the country apart. With an enviable amount of hutzpah, he attends Trump rallies, introduces himself to NRA enthusiasts, attends religious assemblies. He listens to incredible far right delusions, paranoia, fantasies, conspiracies and hatred. Many of the solemnly held convictions of the people he meets are absolutely chilling. Sharlet treats these folks with quiet respect, gains their trust, and listens to their grievances, which are often backed with heavy weaponry. The book does not provide answers but the words "civil war" in the subtitle underscores the seriousness of the divide. It is a very troubling read but important in understanding some of the currents working against social harmony in the country today.
July 4, 2023
4.5 stars
A masterful look at right wing, white Christian nationalist America, written beautifully. Check out my Cozy(?) Reading Vlog for thoughts as I was reading it, as well as this wrap up where I review it in more detail.
You wouldn't be remiss in listening to Sharlet's interview on On the Media either! (transcript available)
A masterful look at right wing, white Christian nationalist America, written beautifully. Check out my Cozy(?) Reading Vlog for thoughts as I was reading it, as well as this wrap up where I review it in more detail.
You wouldn't be remiss in listening to Sharlet's interview on On the Media either! (transcript available)
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