Selected Bibliography of Robin's Reading
FRE, Christian nationalism; Whiteness; the Culture War, and Trump
This very selected bibliography is a list of books I have been accumulating the last few years that relates to the work I’m doing on Tolkien’s legendarium in today’s socio-historical context, a context which involves the inter-related topics of the growing alt-right extremist movements in the world (though I focus primarily on the U.S., the national culture I inhabit); the growth of Christian (evangelical) nationalism; Whiteness theory; the “culture war” (related to the above topics, but what plays out in the context of critical attention to literature, television, media, gaming, and other cultural productions). There are also some books specifically on Donald Trump’s campaigns, insurrections, and presidency. In a sense, one of the original motivations for doing this reading was me trying to make some sort of sense of Trump’s election. I am the kind of autist who makes sense of the world around me by reading.
To some extent, this bibliography overlaps with the “Racisms and ‘Tolkien’” bibliography but only slightly [primarily relating to a few sources listed in that bibliography’s “Medievalists on Racisms (Historical and Contemporary” and “Multi-disciplinary Critical Race Scholarship”]. The overlap is inevitable because in my mind everything connects!
But this list also differs by by beings broader in focus (and consisting entirely of monographs and collections) and the backgrounds of the authors,. It includes quite a few journalists as well as academics (anything from a “UP” or university press is a peer-reviewed text, as are publications from Routledge and Palgrave). There are works by historians (medievalists, historians of religion, historians of fascism) and by literary scholars.
The organizing principle for this list is that I found about the authors on my own and thought that first, they would help me make sense of WTF was happening in the 21st century, and, second, they would provide important background for the work I do on Tolkien (I also write to make sense of the world!).
I found some authors by reading posts in blogs (especially Religion Dispatches which I highly recommend) and on Substack, but sometimes in other ways. The Bob Woodard trilogy is here because he spoke at an event in Bellingham, and I immediately bought the books (based on his years of interviewing Trump). Some were recommended by friends online and in academia.
I have not necessarily read all of them, all the way through (some of the anthologies I bought just for one or two key chapters), nor do I agree with all of them all of the time.
Baker, Peter, and Susan Glasser. The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021. Doubleday, 2022.
Beltrán, Cristina. Cruelty as Citizenship: How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy. U of Minnesota P, 2020.
Berman, Geoffrey. Holding the Line: Inside the Natina’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department. Penguin, 2022.
Bernardi, Daniel, editor. The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Routledge, 2008.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, 6th ed. Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Lynne Riener, 2021.
Butler, Anthea. White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. U of North Carolina P, 2021.
Campbell, David E., Geoffrey C. Layman, and John C. Green. Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics. Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion, and Politics. Cambridge UP, 2021.
Carrington, André M. Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction. U of Minnesota, 2016.
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. Routledge, 2005.
Davis, Julie Hirschfeld, and Michael D. Shear. Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration. Simon & Schuster, 2019.
Duggan, Lisa. The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Beacon Press, 2003.
Durocher, Kristina. Raising Racists: The Socialization of White Children in the Jim Crow South. UP of Kentucky, 2011.
Elliott, Andrew B. R. Medievalism, Politics, and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century. Medievalism, vol. X. D.S. Brewer, 2017.
Fields, Karen E., and Barbara J. Fields. Racecraft: The Sound of Inequality in American Life. Verso, 2012.
Fitzgerald, Frances. The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America. Simon & Schuster, 2017.
Frum, David. Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. HarperCollins, 2018.
Gessen, Masha. Surviving Autocracy. Riverhead Books, 2020.
Hartman, Andrew. A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. U of Chicago P, 2015.
Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge UP, 2018.
Higgins, David M. Reverse Colonization: Science Fiction, Imperial Fantasy, and Alt-Victimhood. The New American Canon. U of Iowa P, 2021.
Hobson, Jannell, editor. Are All the Women Still White? Rethinking Race, Expanding Feminisms. SUNY Series in Feminist Criticism and Theory. State U of New York P, 2016.
Hollinger, David A. Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular. Princeton UP, 2022.
Hongoltz-Hetling, Matthew. A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears). Hatchette, 2020.
HoSang, Daniel Martinez, and Joseph E. Lowndes. Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity. U of Minnesota P, 2019.
Jacobs, Jane. Dark Age Ahead. Vintage, 2004.
Jerng, Mark C. Racial Worldmaking: The Power of Popular Fiction. Fordham UP, 2018.
Jones, Robert P. The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future. Simon & Schuster, 2023
Kaufman, Amy S. and Paul B. Sturtevant. The Devil’s Historians: How Modern Extremists Abuse the Medieval Past. U of Toronto P, 2020.
Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Nation Books, 2016.
Kendzior, Sarah. Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America. Flatiron, 2020.
Kendzior, Sarah. They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent. Flatiron Books, 2022.
Kennedy, Tammie M, Joyce Irene Middleton, and Krista Ratcliffe, editors. Rhetorics of Whiteness: Postracial Hauntings in Popular Culture, Social Media, and Education. Southern Illinois UP, 2017.
Lavender III, Isiah. Race in American Science Fiction. Indiana UP, 2011.
Lentin, Alana. Racism & Anti-Racism in Europe. Pluto Press, 2014.
Lentin, Alana. Why Race Still Matters. Polity Press, 2020.
Main, Thomas J. The Rise of the Alt-Right. Brookings Institution P, 2018.
Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract. Cornell UP, 1997, 2022.
Neiwert, David. Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump. Verso, 2017.
Onishi, Bradley B. Preparing for War: The Extremist history of White Christian Nationalism—and What Comes Next. Broadleaf Books, 2023.
Oluo, Ijeoma. Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. Seal P, 2020.
Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. Norton, 2010.
Pande, Rukmini, editor. Fandom, Now in Color: A Collection of Voices. Fandom and Culture. U of Iowa P, 2020.
Pande, Rukmini. Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race. Fandom and Culture. U of Iowa P, 2018.
Parker, Christopher S. and Matt A. Barreto. Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America. Princeton UP, 2013.
Pomerantz, Mark. People Vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account. Simon & Schuster, 2023.
Quinn, Zoe. Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win Against Online Hate. Public Affairs (Hatchette), 2017.
Ramey, Lynn T. Black Legacies: Race and th European Middle Ages. UP of Florida, 2014.
Richardson, Heather Cox. Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. Viking, 2023.
Richardson, Heather Cox. How the South Won the Civil War. Oxford UP, 2020.
Riggleman, Denver. The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th. Henry Holt, 2022.
Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright (Norton), 2017.
Stallworth, Ron. Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime. Flatiron Books, 2014.
Stern, Alexandra Minna. Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. 2nd edition. U of California P, 2016.
Stern, Alexandra Minna. Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right is Warping the American Imagination. Beacon P, 2019.
Stewart, Katherine. The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Bloomsbury, 2019.
Trump, Mary L. Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. Simon & Schuster, 2020.
Walter, Barbara F. How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them. Crown, 2022.
Whitaker, Cord J. Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking. U of Pennsylvania P, 2019.
Wolfe, Michael. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Henry Holt, 2018.
Woodward, Bob. The Woodward Trilogy: Fear Rage, and Peril. Simon & Schuster, 2020.
Ziegler, Mary. Dollar for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment. Yale UP, 2022.