About this item
A searing portrait and damning takedown of America's proudest citizens - who are also the least likely to defend its core principles White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they're right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage - stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media - now poses an existential threat to the United States.
About the Author
I am professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I started at UMBC in 1998, shortly after completing my PhD at the University of North Carolina in 1997. I am the author of The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House, Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, and co-author (with fellow UMBC political scientist Tyson King-Meadows) of Devolution and Black State Legislators: Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-First Century. Along with Paul Waldman, I am author of White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy (Random House, 2024) . A former political columnist for the Baltimore Sun, I have published commentaries in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The American Prospect, Politico, and The New Republic, and have appeared on ABC News, MSNBC, The Colbert Report, National Public Radio and C-SPAN. Since 2004, I have given lectures on American elections in 19 countries on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Tom Schaller is the penname of Thomas F. Schaller.
