INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the acclaimed author of The Power Worshippers, “an indispensable citizen's guide to the anti-democratic MAGA Right.” -Congressman Jamie Raskin “An eerily prescient guide to the phantasmagoria of our political moment.” -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times "Meticulously researched, elegantly written, and hard-hitting."–Kristin Kobes Du Mez Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down. She introduces us to reactionary Catholic activists, atheist billionaires, pseudo-Platonist intellectuals, self-appointed apostles of Jesus, disciples of Ayn Rand, women-hating opponents of “the gynocracy,” pronatalists preoccupied with the dearth of white babies, Covid truthers, militia members masquerading as “concerned moms,” and battalions of spirit warriors who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about attacking democracy at its foundations. Along the way, she provides a compelling analysis of the authoritarian reaction in the United States. She demonstrates that the movement relies on several distinct constituencies, with very different and often conflicting agendas. Stewart's reporting and comprehensive political analysis helps reframe the conversation about the moral collapse of conservatism in America and points the way toward a democratic future.

In 2009, the Good News Club came to the public elementary school where journalist Katherine Stewart sent her children. The Club bills itself as an after-school Bible study, but Stewart soon discovered that its real mission is to convert children to fundamentalist Christianity. Astonished to discover that the Supreme Court had deemed this religious activity legal in public schools, Stewart began an investigative journey to dozens of cities across the nation to document the impact. As Stewart makes chillingly clear, the rapidly expanding network of Good News Clubs represents just one of a range of initiatives intended to insert religious values into public schools. Although they often appear to be spontaneous, local events, they are in fact organized and funded at a national level. Taken together, they represent a new strategy of the Religious Right in its long-running aim to "take back America," undermining our public education system and secular democracy itself.