The Paranoid Style in American Politics

This richly enjoyable book is an unimprovable guide to the strange highways and byways of American life, written by Richard Hofstadter, the great American historian and intellectual. How is it that a country with such resources, so much space, with such a premium on education and written culture, can so quickly be reduced to a mere headless chicken by rumours, surreal conspiracy theories and the most brazen of con-men?

The only hope offered by Hofstadter is that America has so often been assailed by such gusts of nonsense that we should by now be able to spot the manias, fabrications, patently absurd rumours. There never has been a golden age of reasonably intelligent discourse. But, unfortunately, perhaps there never will be.

In an era where we ourselves feel assailed by endless paranoid public statements it is comforting to read Hofstadter’s incisive refusal to see these as something new. In his discussion of famous and obscure untruths, some of which have profoundly impacted American domestic and foreign policy, he provides the antidote for the present day.