Overview

Anger now dominates American politics. It wasn’t always so. “Happy Days Are Here Again” was FDR’s campaign song in 1932. By contrast, candidate Kamala Harris’s 2020 campaign song was Mary J. Blige’s “Work That” (“Let ‘em get mad / They gonna hate anyway”). Both the left and right now summon anger as the main way to motivate their supporters. Post-election, both sides became even more indignant. The left accuses the right of “insurrection.” The right accuses the left of fraud. This is a book about how we got here—about how America changed from a nation that could be roused to anger but preferred self-control, to a nation permanently dialed to eleven. Peter W. Wood, an anthropologist, has rewritten his 2007 book, A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America, which predicted the new era of political wrath. In his new book, he explains how American culture beginning in the 1950s made a performance art out of anger; how and why we brought anger into our music, movies, and personal lives; and how, having step by step relinquished our old inhibitions on feeling and expressing anger, we turned anger into a way of wielding political power. But the “angri-culture,” as he calls it, doesn’t promise happy days again. It promises revenge. And a crisis that could destroy our republic.

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9781641772198

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What can you do when your rulers choose as their lifestyle wrathful hate of you, apart from any actual grievance? Peter Wood shows how, though countering them with equally forceful wrath is essential for survival, it may be possible to wield that wrath not wholly divorced from reason about good and evil. This deeply thought-out reflection by a master scholar offers intellectual and moral guidance to Americans who hope that resisting our oligarchy's campaigns on our way of life will not lead to civil war. -Angelo M. Codevilla, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University This is a book that engages with anger and wrath but hardly celebrates it. Rather, Peter Wood's newest book reminds us of Aristotle's counsel in his Ethics that we should strive to be the person who 'is angry at the right things and toward the right people, and also in the right way.' Woods is an anthropologist who understands the social forces involved in the kind of anger many of us are feeling right now as our social institutions are attacked and our freedoms threatened. Engaging and accessible to all readers, this book reassures us that although we may have the 'right' to be angry, we need to direct our anger in positive and life-affirming ways to confront the dark forces determined to destroy everything that is good and true and beautiful in this country. -Anne Hendershott, professor of sociology and director of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life, Franciscan University of Steubenville, OH Beware offending the honor of a Greek warrior, especially if his mother is a goddess. And beware angering the once-stolid American middle class. With the cool vision of a social scientist, Peter Wood warns us that the boiling cauldron of rage at the center of twenty-first-century American politics is only too likely to overflow. The book is essential: Read, learn, and ponder. -Rusty Reno, editor of First Things Peter Wood is becoming our foremost 'angerologist.' But his advice about how to channel the 'wrath' of traditional Americans over the hijacking and destruction of their culture is quite different from 'anger management.' Wood shows why conservatives are justifiably seething at the frequent hysterics of the even angrier left-but, more importantly, how they can focus and hone their anger to restore America. An insightful, timely, and splendidly written call to arms. -Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author of The Dying Citizen Building on his previous book, A Bee in the Mouth, Peter Wood has penned a sober, and sobering, assessment of modern America's decline from anger into wrath, and given us an insightful preview of the consequences should we fail to comprehend and address the underlying causes. Well worth the read for anyone (and that should be everyone) who is concerned about the destroy them divide that now plagues our country. -John Eastman The 2020 presidential election was the most compromised in American history. Pandemic-justified federal guidance satisfied long sought-after Democratic Party election laws such as absentee voting, drop boxes, and lax verification. Big Tech and the national media conspired to silence criticism of mail-in voting and suppress damning information about the Biden family. After November 3, 2020, state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Justice Department refused to consider probable cases of election fraud in states that swung from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. All of this and more is why nearly a year later, tens of millions of Americans do not believe Biden won enough legitimate votes to win the presidency. -Julie Kelly, senior writer for American Greatness, author of Disloyal Opposition Peter Wood is one of the most incisive observers of contemporary American politics and one of the few public intellectuals who's proud to call himself a deplorable. -Toby Young

Author Information

Peter W. Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars. A former professor of anthropology and college provost, he is the author of 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project (2020); and other books about American culture, including Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (2003); A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now (2007); Diversity Rules (2020). He is editor-in-chief of the journal Academic Questions and a widely published essayist. In 2019, he received the Jeane Kirkpatrick Prize for contributions to academic freedom.

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