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Enjoyable and useful introduction to the Alt-Right. If you've been trying to understand who these people are and what are they up to, Wendling provides a fine overview. I learned about some of the intellectual underpinnings of the movement, such as they are.

The book's title also offers a suggestion as to how these folks have gained influence. Incidentally, you can't really call them a "group" or "social movement," since they don't really have an organization in the real world. Wendling says that most discussions originate on the anonymous chat board called 4Chan, spreads to Reddit, and then enters the Breitbart-to-Fox-News mainstream.

One of the points Wendling makes repeatedly here is that the alt-right prefers to appropriate other cultural artifacts, especially from the Internet, instead of creating their own symbols. Perhaps the most obvious is the symbol of "Pepe the Frog," a web-comic character created with no particular political persuasion. Alt-rightists turned poor Pepe into a white nationalist meme. Eventually, Pepe's creator had to kill the frog (not that it mattered much to those who still use him)!

Pepe notwithstanding, the least likely cultural appropriation Wendling describes is the singing of Bob Dylan's "Times They Are A-Changin'" at the alt-right "DeploraBall" celebration at Donald Trump's inauguration! You'd think they would have at least come up with parody lyrics!

The alt-right has the potential for being quite scary. Wendling suggests that egos and differences may make them irrelevant soon enough (see the failure of the second "Unite the Right" rally). We'll see...

It's an intriguing concept -- getting oral histories from a variety of Russians with some connection to Russia's year of revolution. Unfortunately, since the interviews were conducted in the 1990s and early 2000s, the interview subjects delivered their testimonies second-hand. The stories came from people who were children, and the memories usually came via their parents.

Bainton's sympathies are clear early on (as I suppose they should be). The Russian people set themselves free in February 1917, but were betrayed in the Bolshevik "coup" of October. Alexander Kerensky should have been a hero, but he was cast aside after appointing General Kornilov head of the army.

The book is easy to read, and the stories are interesting, but this isn't the first book you should read about the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

This collection of [a:Neil deGrasse Tyson|12855|Neil deGrasse Tyson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1423292563p2/12855.jpg] essays from Natural History magazine seeks to provide "a foundational fluency in all the major ideas and discoveries that drive our modern understanding of the universe," as Tyson writes in his introduction. "If I've succeeded, you'll be culturally conversant in my field of expertise, and you just may be hungry for more."

He pretty much succeeds in his other goal, giving us all a "cosmic perspective." Starting with the Big Bang, and concluding with how an alien society might locate this exoplanet and assess its inhabitants, you will get a basic understanding of how the universe works, regardless of how you did in science class. If you've seen Tyson live, or watched his Star Talk show, you'll know he can be quite funny, and flashes of that show up here too. The brevity and conciseness does make this a very easy read.

While I wish he'd added some Further Reading to each chapter, for those who might want to dig deeper, I highly recommend this. Go pick it up.

So you're having trouble understanding how Donald Trump was elected president. Having similar issues understanding why he is so popular among his base. Perhaps you've read [b:Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis|27161156|Hillbilly Elegy A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis|J.D. Vance|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463569814s/27161156.jpg|47200486] to learn more about the white working class and what's happened to them in recent decades. This book might be a worthwhile next stop.

[b:Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort|1051175|Right-Wing Populism in America Too Close for Comfort|Chip Berlet|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348376319s/1051175.jpg|1037635] looks at conservative attempts to win over the white working class throughout US history. The first half of the book covering the US through the post-World War II Red Scare, written by [a:Matthew Lyons|5750909|Matthew Lyons|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], is a little dry.

The narrative picks up and becomes more useful to contemporary readers in the second half. [a:Chip Berlet|389300|Chip Berlet|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png] brings decades of study and action against the modern far right to his research outlined in this book. Berlet argues that "producerism" is the guiding ideology of the populist right. "Producerism posits a noble hard-working middle group constantly in conflict with lazy, malevolent, or sinful parasites at the top and bottom of the social order. The characters and details in this story have changed repeatedly, but its main outlines have remained the same for some 200 years." The echoes of this idea can readily be heard in the rhetoric of Trump, Steve Bannon and their supporters.

Yes, this book was written long before the Tea Party rose up, but its predecessors provide valuable context. Yet Berlet and Lyons are careful not to attack the followers of these movements. They recognize that the appeal of right-wing populism in the 20th century, from Huey Long through George Wallace to Newt Gingrich, has often come out of the failures of Democratic Party leaders to defend working-class living standards, and the limited choices the US political system offers.

Overall, this is a valuable resource.

The Candidate is an immensely readable and informative chronicle of Jeremy Corbyn's rise to Labour Party leadership in 2015. Munns gets all the right interviews, especially those who won the social-media wars.

The book is brilliant in outlining the organizational changes in how Labour leaders are elected. In many ways, this story is a case study in unanticipated consequences for the New Labour backers. This proved even more true in 2016, when the parliamentary caucus attempted to reassert its traditional power.

Folks in the US interested in building support for a more progressive politics may well get some pointers from the detailed discussion of the Corbyn campaign.

If you're not British, or not overly familiar with how UK elections work, you might feel a little bit confused occasionally. Still, if you want the whole story from the perspective of an unabashed Corbyn fan. Fans of Tony Blair and his politics probably won't like this story much at all. I will look forward to the next edition!