SynopsisRachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.
That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.
At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.
None of it went as planned.
While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality, it involved a large number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.
That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.
Format 416 pages, Hardcover
Published October 17, 2023 by Crown
ISBN 9780593444511 (ISBN10: 0593444515)
About the Author
Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award–winning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power; Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth; and Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House. Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula.
My Thoughts
"History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes."
They say that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Reading Rachel Maddow's Prequel, that old adage lands with uncomfortable, clarifying force. The America of the 1930s had Senator Huey Long — loud, brash, barnstorming, and brimming with populist promises — and the resonance with our own era of bombastic political theater is impossible to dismiss. Maddow doesn't make that parallel clumsily. She doesn't need to. The evidence, laid out with the precision of a seasoned researcher and historian, speaks for itself.
Let me start by saying that this review will differ a little from past reviews. It is too weighty, too important to write a simple "book review", for we find ourselves on the precipice between democracy and fascism and must make a choice — will we uphold democracy or fall into the pit of fascism?
Prequel tells the story of a far-right authoritarian impulse that has run through the veins of American political life for nearly a hundred years. In the 1930s, coinciding with Hitler's rise in Europe, a coordinated movement pushed hard for fascism here at home. Groups stockpiled weapons and explosives in preparation for an insurrection. Government officials worked in coordination with foreign actors. A fascist-sympathetic narrative was amplified through official and unofficial channels alike. This was not fringe paranoia — it was organized, resourced, and frighteningly close to succeeding and included a complex cast of characters. From American citizens like Viereck who doubled as a Nazi agent to Louisiana Governor and later State Senator Huey Long (a very Trumpian bloviate), and with the zealous support of Americans like Laura Ingalls (not THAT Laura Ingalls!), an accomplished female pilot and paid Nazi agent who dropped fascist pamphlets from the air onto Washington D.C., and dozens of others who worked in a coordinated effort to infiltrate the heart of democracy and tear it down from the inside.
What is remarkable — and what gives this book its most urgent energy — is the story of who stopped it. Not always the institutions we might hope to rely on. Where the American legal system faltered, journalists and activists filled the breach. Investigators, reporters, and citizens took up the banner of democracy through dogged, unglamorous work. Journalists risked imprisonment, legal experts used the judicial system to fight any way they could, citizens shared information they had gathered with government and legal officials who were in a position to do something to fight the fascist attack on the pillars of democracy.
This is where Maddow's particular genius comes into its own. She is a master of the long connective thread — drawing bright lines between the events of the past and the present without letting the comparison become reductive or cheap. Prequel teaches us what was learned the last time democracy faced this kind of pressure: where the weaknesses are, what held, and — critically — what it will take to hold again. She identifies the strongholds. She maps the vulnerabilities. She makes a history lesson feel like a field guide.
The book is also, simply, a pleasure to read. Maddow brings to the page the same qualities that made her a formidable broadcaster: the ability to take deeply complex, document-heavy material and render it not just comprehensible but genuinely gripping. Her research is formidable. Her journalistic integrity is evident on every page. And her storytelling instincts transform what might otherwise be a dry historical account into something that reads with the momentum of a thriller. The result is a text that is at once a celebration — democracy was fought for and, in that moment, successfully defended — and a warning.
Five words: well-researched, immersive, inspirational, terrifying, alarming
Buy Now:
My final word: This book is well researched, well documented, and well written. Maddow is a master storyteller handing us a guide for the fight ahead of us. The impulse toward authoritarianism did not dissolve with the defeat of fascism abroad; it went quiet, regrouped, and waited. Democracy is once again under attack from the inside, and Prequel makes the case — calmly, rigorously, without hysteria — that this is not unprecedented, that it has been faced before, and that it can be faced again. This is a siren call.
Don't give up the fight. Don't let the bastards grind you down.
My Rating:
The Cerebral Girl is a middle-aged blogger just digging her way out from under a mountain of books in the deep south of Florida.
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