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Nancy MacLean, author of a provocative new book, The Origins of the Radical Right and the Crisis of Our Democracy, will speak Thursday, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m. at the East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St., St. Paul.
The free program, open to all, is sponsored by the East Side Freedom Library, ISAIAH–Minnesota and the University of Minnesota’s History Department.
The book is described as “an explosive exposé of the little-known thinker behind the radical right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution: the Nobel Prize winning political economist James McGill Buchanan. It was Buchanan who taught billionaire Charles Koch that for capitalism to thrive, democracy must be enchained.”
The Guardian has called the book “the missing chapter: a key to understanding the politics of the past half century.” Democracy in Chains was a finalist in nonfiction for the National Book Award.
MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University in North Carolina. The program will include discussion with the author.