Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism
ISBN: 9780691187976
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / Princeton University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Political activists; Women political activists; Conservatism; Conservatives;

Betty Friedan once snapped at Phyllis Schlafly, "I'd like to burn you at the stake." And this engaging, if flawed, biography of the doyenne of U.S. conservatism during the heated early 1970s makes it clear why: it's not just Schlafly's far-right stands on feminism and reproductive rights, but her formidable debating skills and political organizing experience. Critchlow (a professor of history at St. Louis University) draws widely on both unlimited access to his subject's private papers and a broad range of other social documents. And there's much here that is fascinating, such as a mesmerizing account of Schlafly's place in the byzantine infighting of Catholic anticommunist groups in the early 1960s. But the book wavers between being a sustained account of Schlafly's career and a comprehensive political history of the conservative and religious right-and delivers fully on neither. Further, Critchlow's detached and even tone reflects none of the political passion that gripped Schlafly's life and work. While this may be a historian's attempt at objectivity, it often makes Schlafly less compelling, even at her most politically extreme-when she said the 1960s race riots were led, in part, by "federally funded poverty workers." (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved