Wrapped in the Flag

By Claire Conner,

Book cover of Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America's Radical Right

Book description

A narrative history of the John Birch Society by a daughter of one of the infamous ultraconservative organization’s founding fathers.

Named a best nonfiction book of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews and the Tampa Bay Times
 
Long before the rise of the Tea Party movement and the prominence of today’s religious…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

2 authors picked Wrapped in the Flag as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I thought I knew all there was for an average, responsible citizen to know about the John Birch Society until I read Claire Conner's memoir of growing up with parents in the movement.

It was far more influential then and now than I understood. The Society has a prominent place in the history of today's radical right. Conner's personal story helped me understand how an ideology can consume one's thoughts, actions, and emotions to the exclusion of even one's children.

It also illuminated the Herculean effort it takes to break free. This memoir is eminently readable. I was shocked, angered,…

I like Conner’s memoir because it gives an insider’s feel for what it was like to grow up as the child of leaders of the John Birch Society, the nation’s leading far-right anticommunist group of the 1960s.

The Birchers (also the subject of my recent book Birchers) embodied the so-called “paranoid style in American politics,” and Conner’s intimate tale explains how Birchite conspiracy theories appealed to a subset of wealthy, powerful Americans. Conner’s approach – forthright and unflinching – makes for memorable reading.

If you love Wrapped in the Flag...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Want books like Wrapped in the Flag?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Wrapped in the Flag.

Browse books like Wrapped in the Flag

Book cover of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
Book cover of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present
Book cover of Strom Thurmond's America

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

2,007

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like Wrapped in the Flag, you might also like...

Book cover of Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World

Harry and Arthur by Lawrence J. Haas,

With Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Vice President Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican leader on foreign policy, inherited a world in turmoil. With Europe flattened and the Soviets emerging as America’s new adversary, Truman and Vandenberg built a tight, bipartisan partnership at a bitterly partisan time…

Book cover of Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink

Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink by Ethan Chorin,

Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in politics, presidential biography, and international relations?

Politics 776 books