In Roads to Dominion (1995; Guilford Press, Notes, Bibliography, Index, 445 pages, $19.95, soft), author Sara Diamond tells the stories of major players on the Right, such as Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, and the Christian Coalition, providing insight into today's headlines and tomorrow's news. Based on extensive firsthand research, Diamond traces the development of four types of right-wing movements over the past 50 years: the anti-communist conservative movement, the racist Right, the Christian Right, and the neoconservatives. Diamond explains how right-wing movements have evolved, sometimes as opponents of elected administration, but often as collaborators with one or more factions of our two-party system.

Diamond shows how the anticommunist policies of the United States government encouraged the growth of right-wing organizations. She documents the separate history of the racist Right, as various white supremacist groups responded to the gains of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and beyond. The book also gives a thorough history of the Christian Right, and explains how and why it has become the single largest and most influential grass-roots social movement active in the U.S. politics. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand why the Right now dominates legislative policy-making processes in this country.

An excellent new book on the Right in the United States is just out. The title is: Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (ISBN 0-89862-864-4)

The author is Sara Diamond, whose previous book Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (1989, South End Press,) has become the standard reference on the Christian Right in the United States. The new book expands both the time covered and the range of right-wing movements. With 425 pages packed with facts backed up by 1300 end notes, the book is a gold mine of information.

While there have been plenty of books written about the left, scholars haven't paid anywhere near the same attention to the American Right. This book, one of the most sweeping studies of its kind goes a long way toward rectifying the imbalance by delineating the currents of conservative thought from early in this century to today and identifying the groups--from the Ku Klux Klan to contemporary paleo- and neo-conservatives, libertarians, and the Christian right (though, perhaps strangely, not the NRA)--that espouse them. Rather than emphasize such groups extremism, as the media often does, Diamond makes clear their links to mainstream thought and to the political and business interests that sustain them. She makes dozens of crucial connections, showing how members of the Christian right carried out covert activities for the Reagan administration and how figures such as direct-mail wizard Richard Viguerie--whose computerized voting lists have helped Republicans win many Congressional seats--maintain ties to organizations further to the right. In passing, Diamond shows how social theory has failed to account for right-wing movements, but her analysis remains geared to general readers. While her approach may make such groups as the John Birch Society appear more anodyne than liberals would wish, it is both balanced and scholarly; it's the aggregate that is the most alarming. This book should prove a touchstone of future discussions about the right, which is more powerful today than at any time since the 1920s.