Books had little to do with the populist uprising that swept Donald Trump into power in 2016 and 2024. But a cadre of right-wing writers and influencers have been constructing intellectual scaffolding around the MAGA phenomenon ever since. In Furious Minds, Laura K. Field explains and taxonomizes the effort to replace old-school Reagan-style conservatism with something more ruthless and muscular—but still grounded in ideas.
Field divides the New Right into three rough factions: Claremonters (such as Michael Anton, the man behind the infamous "Flight 93 Election"essay published in the Claremont Review of Books), postliberals (such as Patrick Deneen, author of Why Liberalism Failed, which made it onto former President Barack Obama's reading list), and national conservatives (such as Yoram Hazony, an Israeli-American philosopher trying to make nationalism great again).
