Kansas -> America

The Thomas Frank book I mentioned 'What's the Matter with Kansas?' has been
published abroad as 'What's the Matter with America?'

There's a long and interesting review of it in the Dec 2 issue of The London
Review of Books by Anatol Lieven that starts out like this:

"There is no great mystery about the Republican victory in the US election.
It was the product of what used to be one of the most familiar and poweful
combinations in the modern history of Europe: the marriage of nationalism
and conservative religion. The combination is unfamiliar to most Western
Europeans today; but it was all too familiar to their ancestors, and remains
so in many parts of the world. The problem is that Western Europeans think
of these countries as backward. If we are shocked at what happened in the US
it is because the US is in so many respects the most modern, the fastest
changing society on earth. How can it also in some ways be so archaic?

The question of course assumes that the European experience of modernisation
is the standard one, and that all others are aberations. It also stems
directly or indirectly from our commitment to Max Weber and his belief in
the inevitable disenchantment of the world as a result of capitalist
modernisation. Over the past generation, formerly conservative countries
such as Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece have all been profoundly
transformed, and in all of them there has been a decline of religious faith
and practice, and of the modes of thought and behavior associated with
religion.

This is not a universal pattern, however. America is a huge exception, but
so is India. There, economic dynamism, and 'modern', or partially 'modern',
attitudes to sex and caste are often combined, among the newly educated
Hindu middle class, with deep religious faith, and this faith is often
associated with Hindu nationalistic politics."

ja