Thomas Frank

It could be a movie: After years of struggle, four writers, close friends and allies from their days working together in the early '90s on a small but highly influential magazine of politics and culture, are all suddenly enjoying varying degrees of success in the world of American letters. Matt is an editor at The Paris Review. Rick is a historian. The other two are both named Tom: one of them is a magazine journalist and the other writes a column for the Wall Street Journal. Each of them has written a book, and against all odds they are being published mere weeks apart.  read more »

The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule
By Thomas Frank
Metropolitan Books, 384 pages, $25

Call it the Thomas Frank Problem: Since What’s the Matter With Kansas? (2005), the journalist and polemicist has become a figure of irresolvable promise and consternation to the American left. Kansas, of course, put in straight and strident words what liberals previously felt compelled to dance around: that the conservative revolution was won, in large part, by convincing anxious citizens to vote directly against their economic interest. Four years later, and the Problem raises clamors on least two fronts.

The first is factual. As a number of academic number-crunchers have discovered, class—and especially the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses issue of "relative deprivation"—remains a fairly good indicator of political behavior, as long as you’re asking the right questions.  read more »