Book Reviews

Pitchfork Populism is an important book, one that deserves to be on the bookshelves of all who want to understand who we are as a nation, and just where we are heading. In this profound and persuasive book, Bradford R. Kane digs deep into America’s history and provides insightful documentation that Trump reflects the split personality that was present at the creation of our country and stubbornly refuses to unify except during times of crises.

— William S. Cohen, former Secretary of Defense, former senator from Maine, and CEO of The Cohen Group

Bradford R. Kane has produced a cogent, reasoned, and contextualized description of how we got to this sorry place and how we might move past it. There’s hope!

— Jonathan Alter, former Newsweek columnist, MSNBC political analyst, and New York Times–bestselling author of The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies

Rich in detail and analysis, Bradford Kane reprises the trail of political broken glass that leads to the present and reminds us that our principles and national identity are at stake and should not be corrupted by pitchfork populism.

— Vint Cerf, internet pioneer, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, and former member of the National Science Board

A timely and truly fascinating deep dive into the unusual and often strange developments in the current American political system. The book explores whether traditional bipartisanship is even possible in the era of Trump, amid the political earthquake he and others have facilitated. As a long-term politician and former congressman from a state with a deep history of populism, I found myself captivated. This is an important read, given our nation’s often terrifying political climate.

— Dan Glickman, senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC, executive director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program, former Kansas congressman, and former US Secretary of Agriculture

Depending on what side of the current political divide you find yourself, 2016 will mark either the year that the United States began its decline and fall or the moment when America was made ‘great again.’ Many books will yet be written in efforts to understand just what happened in 2016 and what it means. Bradford Kane has written a primer that will be necessary reading for anyone, today or in the future, wanting to understand this tumultuous time. But Kane’s book is more than this.

Beautifully written in clear prose, it not only tells the story of how we got to this point in our history and what this juncture might bode for our future but, most urgently, how we might yet ensure the survival of the American Constitution, that great experiment in governing.

— David L. Faigman, chancellor and dean, John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California Hastings College of the Law

Putting Down the Pitchforks

The election of 2016 was a wake-up call – or, as Bradford R. Kane calls it in his new book, “a politiquake” – that changed the American political landscape. As one example, he points to the rancorous atmosphere at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies, which, he writes, “often had a feeling akin to … the scene in ‘Frankenstein’ when the town folk marched down the street with pitchforks and torches, ready to unleash their fears and anger at the source of their discontent.”

— HillRag
The Literary Hill
By Karen Lyon -March 1, 2020

Read the full review @
https://hillrag.com/2020/03/01/the-literary-hill-24/