Skip navigation
London Review of Books

Taking back America subscriber-only content

Anatol Lieven

  • What’s the Matter with America? The Resistible Rise of the American Right by Thomas Frank

There is no great mystery about the Republican victory in the US election. It was the product of what used to be one of the most familiar and powerful combinations in the modern history of Europe: the marriage of nationalism and conservative religion. The combination is unfamiliar to most Western Europeans today; but it was all too familiar to their ancestors, and remains so in many parts of the world. The problem is that Western Europeans think of these countries as backward. If we are shocked at what happened in the US it is because the US is in so many respects the most modern, the fastest changing society on earth. How can it also in some ways be so archaic?

subscriber-only content Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.

Anatol Lieven reported from Moscow for the Times from 1990 to 1996 and is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington DC. His latest book is Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World.