100 books like The Rural Voter

By Nicholas F. Jacobs, Daniel M. Shea,

Here are 100 books that The Rural Voter fans have personally recommended if you like The Rural Voter. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Stolen Pride

Marlene Laruelle Author Of The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism

From my list on understanding why Donald Trump won.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been fascinated with ideas and ideologies and how people can interpret the world differently. As a teenager I wanted to become an ethnographer, to travel the world and discover other cultures. Now I focus mostly on Europe and the US, but I always look to challenge myself by talking with people who hold opposing views. I am impressed by the revival of religious, nationalist, and conservative ideas in our current world and how they offer their own philosophy of the social order. That’s why I selected books that can help me see the world through the eyes of others.

Marlene's book list on understanding why Donald Trump won

Marlene Laruelle Why did Marlene love this book?

This is my preferred book on this topic because it offers a pungent story of how pride and shame matter to our understanding of politics. Arlie Russell Hochschild already wrote another terrific book on Louisiana a few years ago, so I was really looking forward to this new one on the Appalachian post-industrial communities.

The way she describes small events of everyday life and how they influence voting patterns struck a chord with me. It tells us how politics at the grassroots level is, in fact, about making sense of the world around us and navigating difficulties, and it’s all about emotions and the way we deal with the question, “What about me?” It’s a superb book for deconstructing “high politics” and shows how far away people may feel from decisions made in Washington, DC.

By Arlie Russell Hochschild,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stolen Pride as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In her first book since the widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author Arlie Russell Hochschild now ventures to Appalachia, uncovering the "pride paradox" that has given the right's appeals such resonance.

A 2024 New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick

For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a…


Book cover of American Evangelicals for Trump

Marlene Laruelle Author Of The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism

From my list on understanding why Donald Trump won.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been fascinated with ideas and ideologies and how people can interpret the world differently. As a teenager I wanted to become an ethnographer, to travel the world and discover other cultures. Now I focus mostly on Europe and the US, but I always look to challenge myself by talking with people who hold opposing views. I am impressed by the revival of religious, nationalist, and conservative ideas in our current world and how they offer their own philosophy of the social order. That’s why I selected books that can help me see the world through the eyes of others.

Marlene's book list on understanding why Donald Trump won

Marlene Laruelle Why did Marlene love this book?

For all those like me who are not familiar with Evangelical culture, this is the perfect book; very pedagogical in its explanations. It shows the key ideas and institutions that have pushed a large part of the Evangelical world to rally around Donald Trump.

For me, the most interesting part was the aspect of spiritual warfare, a notion that I studied while working on Russian ideologies. The idea of a forthcoming civil war, either real or feared, and how it can be read through Biblical themes related to eschatology is something that left a lasting impression on me. 

By André Gagné, Linda Shanahan (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked American Evangelicals for Trump as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book introduces the American Evangelical movement and the role it played in the support of Donald Trump. Specifically, it focuses on the Neocharismatic-Pentecostal (NCP) leaders, their beliefs, and their political strategies. The author examines why 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016, and why he still received between 76% and 81% of their vote in 2020 despite losing the presidency. Additionally, the book discusses how NCP leaders are part of the Christian Right, a religious coalition with a political agenda centered on controversial issues such as anti-abortion activism, opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, and the protection of religious…


Book cover of Rust Belt Union Blues

Marlene Laruelle Author Of The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism

From my list on understanding why Donald Trump won.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been fascinated with ideas and ideologies and how people can interpret the world differently. As a teenager I wanted to become an ethnographer, to travel the world and discover other cultures. Now I focus mostly on Europe and the US, but I always look to challenge myself by talking with people who hold opposing views. I am impressed by the revival of religious, nationalist, and conservative ideas in our current world and how they offer their own philosophy of the social order. That’s why I selected books that can help me see the world through the eyes of others.

Marlene's book list on understanding why Donald Trump won

Marlene Laruelle Why did Marlene love this book?

I enjoyed this book because it goes right to what is a core issue of our contemporary political landscape: how formerly Democratic blue-collar communities have been shifting their political orientation toward the Republicans.

I also loved the combination of ethnographic analysis and historical perspective the two authors display to look at the transformation of our trade union culture (in their case, in Pennsylvania). It tells us how much everyday sociability—how we spend our leisure time, which social groups we belong to, etc.—has reshaped our political worldview.

By Theda Skocpol, Lainey Newman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Rust Belt Union Blues as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions were embedded in tight-knit communities, touching nearly every aspect of the lives of members-mostly men-and their families and neighbors. They conveyed fundamental worldviews, making blue-collar unionists into loyal Democrats who saw the party as on the side of the working man. Today, unions play a much less significant role in American life. In industrial and formerly industrial Rust Belt towns, Republican-leaning groups and outlooks have burgeoned among the kinds of voters who once would have been part of union communities.

Lainey Newman and…


Book cover of Defectors

Marlene Laruelle Author Of The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism

From my list on understanding why Donald Trump won.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been fascinated with ideas and ideologies and how people can interpret the world differently. As a teenager I wanted to become an ethnographer, to travel the world and discover other cultures. Now I focus mostly on Europe and the US, but I always look to challenge myself by talking with people who hold opposing views. I am impressed by the revival of religious, nationalist, and conservative ideas in our current world and how they offer their own philosophy of the social order. That’s why I selected books that can help me see the world through the eyes of others.

Marlene's book list on understanding why Donald Trump won

Marlene Laruelle Why did Marlene love this book?

This book was a discovery for me, as I know very little about Latino culture, but it’s super well-written and argued. Paula Ramos presents us with the whole spectrum of Latino figures who rallied to the Republican Party and their reasoning behind this, but she also adds a lot of personal introspection to it.

As a European émigré in the US, I could relate to many of her stories about what it means to embrace American national identity and the issues immigrants and second and third generations have to address. 

By Paola Ramos,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Defectors as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An award-winning journalist's exploration of how race, identity and political trauma have influenced the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos, and how this group can shape American politics

“A deeply reported, surprisingly personal exploration of a phenomenon that is little understood in our politics: the affiliation of Latino voters with causes and candidates that would seem, at first glance, unwelcoming to them."—Rachel Maddow

Democrats have historically assumed they can rely on the Latino vote, but recent elections have called that loyalty into question. In fact, despite his vociferous anti-immigrant rhetoric and disastrous border policies, Trump won a higher percentage of…


Book cover of Why We're Polarized

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young Author Of Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation

From my list on understanding identity-driven wrongness in the United States.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a professor of communication and political science who’s been researching and publishing on the effects of political media on democratic health for 25 years. More recently, I’ve been trying to understand the roots of inter-party hostility, the drop in trust in institutions, and the rise in Americans’ belief in breathtakingly false information. My hope is that through this selection of books, you’ll start to understand the synergistic dynamics between America’s complicated history with race, changes in America’s parties, media, and culture, and various social psychological processes, and maybe even start to see a way out of this mess.

Dannagal's book list on understanding identity-driven wrongness in the United States

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young Why did Dannagal love this book?

I am a huge fan of people who can translate vast amounts of research findings in a way that’s engaging, accessible, and accurate. I’m also a fan of people who don’t waste our time by shying away from hard truths, like the fact that America’s polarization problem is largely about race or that our polarized politics get baked back into our institutions and make everything worse. Klein is a master at all of this.

When I read his book, I was deep in the academic literature about the psychology of misinformation beliefs. But his book made me zoom out to consider factors way upstream of misinformation beliefs (namely social identity), to start unpacking how these upstream factors are themselves shaped by our political and media institutions.

By Ezra Klein,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Why We're Polarized as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A BARACK OBAMA AND A BILL GATES SUMMER READING PICK 2022
A NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

'This book helped me understand modern politics better' - Bill Gates, Summer Reading Pick 2022

'Superbly researched and written' - Francis Fukuyama, The Washington Post

'It's been a long time since I learned so much from one book.' - Rutger Bregman author of Utopia for Realists

'Powerful [and] intelligent.' - Fareed Zakaria, CNN

America's political system isn't broken. The truth is scarier: it's working exactly as designed.

In Why We're Polarized, Ezra Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind…


Book cover of Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right

Kyle Burke Author Of Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War

From my list on the history of American conservatism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a professor of modern US and global history at Hartwick College in upstate New York. I have been reading and researching the history of conservative and right-wing movements in the United States and the wider world for almost two decades. My first book, Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War, was published by University of North Carolina Press in 2018. My articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in Jacobin, Diplomatic History, Terrorism and Political Science, H-War, and H-Diplo. I’m currently at work on two projects: a history of the transatlantic white power movement and a film documentary about the short-lived white supremacist nation of Rhodesia and its contemporary legacies.

Kyle's book list on the history of American conservatism

Kyle Burke Why did Kyle love this book?

This is a field-defining work. First published in 2001, McGirr’s book prompted a generation of historians to reexamine the rise and evolution of modern American conservatism. Focused on the suburbs of Orange County, California, Suburban Warriors explored how grassroots conservative activists mobilized to reshape the politics of the nation. Through the stories of ordinary people--housewives and defense workers, evangelical worshippers, and anti-communist activists--we learn how the modern American right evolved from a fringe movement into arguably the most powerful political force in the United States.

By Lisa McGirr,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Suburban Warriors as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the early 1960s, American conservatives seemed to have fallen on hard times. McCarthyism was on the run, and movements on the political left were grabbing headlines. The media lampooned John Birchers's accusations that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist puppet. Mainstream America snickered at warnings by California Congressman James B. Utt that "barefooted Africans" were training in Georgia to help the United Nations take over the country. Yet, in Utt's home district of Orange County, thousands of middle-class suburbanites proceeded to organize a powerful conservative movement that would land Ronald Reagan in the White House and redefine the spectrum of…


Book cover of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Georg Loefflmann Author Of The Politics of Antagonism: Populist Security Narratives and the Remaking of Political Identity

From my list on understand how populism works.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am Lecturer in US Foreign Policy at Queen Mary University of London, and I work on issues of national security and identity, political rhetoric and the role of the everyday in shaping politics, especially media and popular culture. I have written extensively on American politics and US foreign policy over these past years with two published monographs and more than a dozen articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, plus a couple of op-eds and multiple TV and radio appearances. My most recent research project explores the role of populism under the Trump presidency and its political impact in the United States.

Georg's book list on understand how populism works

Georg Loefflmann Why did Georg love this book?

I found this to be a fascinating book. It offered real insights into the everyday lives of working-class individuals in rural Louisiana, especially their emotional states, anger, frustration, fears, hopes, and aspirations.

Reading the book, I felt like I was actually sharing the lives of the families that Hochschild observed, getting a real understanding of how they saw the world and why they might want to vote for a figure like Donald Trump. For my money, it is sociological writing at its best.

By Arlie Russell Hochschild,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Strangers in Their Own Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Strangers in Their Own Land, the renowned sociologist Arlie Hochschild embarks on a thought-provoking journey from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country - a stronghold of the conservative right. As she gets to know people who strongly oppose many of the ideas she famously champions, Hochschild nevertheless finds common ground and quickly warms to the people she meets, people whose concerns are actually ones that all Americans share: the desire for community, the embrace of family, and hopes for their children.


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

Matthew Dallek Author Of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right

From my list on the far-right and its influence in US politics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian and a professor of political management at George Washington University, and I became interested in the John Birch Society when I encountered the group while writing my first book, on Ronald Reagan's 1966 California governor's campaign. I'm also fascinated by debates about political extremism in modern America including such questions as: how does the culture define extremism in a given moment? How does the meaning of extremism shift over time? And how do extremists sometimes become mainstream within the context of American politics? These were some of the puzzles that motivated me to write Birchers

Matthew's book list on the far-right and its influence in US politics

Matthew Dallek Why did Matthew love this book?

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.

By Claire Conner,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Wrapped in the Flag as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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 Right, the John Birch Society, first established in 1958, championed many of the same radical causes touted by ultraconservatives today, including campaigns against abortion rights, gay rights, gun control, labor unions, environmental protections, immigrant rights, social and welfare programs, the United Nations, and even water fluoridation.

Worshipping its anti-Communist hero…


Book cover of Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young Author Of Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation

From my list on understanding identity-driven wrongness in the United States.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a professor of communication and political science who’s been researching and publishing on the effects of political media on democratic health for 25 years. More recently, I’ve been trying to understand the roots of inter-party hostility, the drop in trust in institutions, and the rise in Americans’ belief in breathtakingly false information. My hope is that through this selection of books, you’ll start to understand the synergistic dynamics between America’s complicated history with race, changes in America’s parties, media, and culture, and various social psychological processes, and maybe even start to see a way out of this mess.

Dannagal's book list on understanding identity-driven wrongness in the United States

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young Why did Dannagal love this book?

I always tell my students that one thing that I love about being a social scientist is that it’s as much art as it is science. Oliver and Wood exemplify the creative side of social psychology as they study how people are intuitionists or rationalists.

My favorite part is the questions that they designed to measure whether people are “magical thinkers,” that is, are they more concerned about symbolic harm than actual harm: “Would you rather stick your hands in a bowl of cockroaches or stab a photo of your family six times?”

I like to think of myself as rational, but there’s no way you could make me stab a photo of my family! I’ll take the cockroaches, thank you…

By J. Eric Oliver, Thomas J. Wood,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Enchanted America as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

America is in civic chaos, its politics rife with conspiracy theories and false information. Nationalism and authoritarianism are on the rise, while scientists, universities, and news organizations are viewed with increasing mistrust. Its citizens reject scientific evidence on climate change and vaccinations while embracing myths of impending apocalypse. And then there is Donald Trump, a presidential candidate who won the support of millions of conservative Christians despite having no moral or political convictions. What is going on?

The answer, according to J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, can be found in the most important force shaping American politics today:…


Book cover of Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788–1865

Mark R. Cheathem Author Of The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson

From my list on early U.S. presidential campaigning.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a historian of the U.S. presidency, I have long been fascinated by the ways in which aspirants for the White House energize and harness popular support for their candidacy. Tracing the development of electioneering practices from the early 1800s to today has been fascinating. Is there a connection between the hickory sprigs worn by Andrew Jackson’s supporters and the MAGA hats worn by Donald Trump’s supporters? Between the political rallies of William Henry Harrison and those of every modern presidential candidate? Between the derision leveled at politically active women in the 1830s and that directed at Sarah Palin and Hilary Rodham Clinton in the twenty-first century? You betcha!

Mark's book list on early U.S. presidential campaigning

Mark R. Cheathem Why did Mark love this book?

The connection between music and contemporary politics is obvious, but it is easy to forget that before Woody Guthrie, the protest songs of the 1960s, Green Day, and Keke Palmer, music was an integral part of national politics. Coleman unsurprisingly contends that political music in the early U.S. was collective and participatory, but he goes on to argue that elites used it to enforce conformity, an interesting twist on how we traditionally think of political music as challenging the status quo. 

By Billy Coleman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Harnessing Harmony as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Following the creation of the United States, profound disagreements remained over how to secure the survival of the republic and unite its diverse population. In this pathbreaking account, Billy Coleman uses the history of American music to illuminate the relationship between elite power and the people from the early national period to the Civil War. Based on deep archival research in sources such as music periodicals, songbooks, and manuals for musical instruction, Coleman argues that a particular ideal of musical power provided conservative elites with an attractive road map for producing the harmonious union they desired. He reassesses the logic…


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