$28.95
$28.95
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A National Book Critics Circle Finalist for Nonfiction
One of the New York Times 100 Notable Books
One of The New Republic's Best Books
One of America’s finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart
"[The Undertow] is a foreboding drive through the backroads of the country’s rising militancy. From campy Trump rallies and a memorial service for the January 6 insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt to a televangelist’s church in Miami and a self-declared prophet in Omaha, Sharlet takes a hard, unwavering look at the nation’s guns-and-Bibles underbelly." - James Sullivan, Boston Globe
"[Sharlet] may be unusually hopeful for an author invoking civil war in his subtitle, but he is not deluded.… A dark travelogue of a nation of ‘simmering violence’ in which QAnon-influenced rabbit-holers stalk perceived enemies, often without making headlines.… He wants readers to feel empathy for…those he met along the way. Some of them might be ‘worst of the worst,’ but ultimately we need to understand the right and its vulnerabilities." - Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times
"A riveting, insightful reading of ‘Real America’―the fearful, violent, and sometimes chaotic lives of people who are caught in a maelstrom of social, economic, and racial tensions. Weaving religion, hate, hope, and fear into stories that catch us unaware, Jeff Sharlet confronts us with the realities of the shifting American psyche―a must-read in order to understand the conflicting voices and tensions in America today." - Anthea Butler, author of White Evangelical Racism
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies--sometimes realities--of violence.
Across the country, men "of God" glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war--a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened--love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our 45th president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.
Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.
Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility.
