Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism Hardcover – October 17, 2023

What I liked:- Deeply researched - amazing depth, particularly of a wide range of characters (a few of whom are true heroes) and many more miscreants - Rachel must have had a spectacular research team to work with! She mentions that "there were millions of words written about the rise of (and fight against) fascism as it was happening in pre-World War II America" - but I bet that most Americans haven't been exposed to them.- Starts off mildly with George Sylvester Viereck (a ridiculous author, but just wait!) but then shifts gears progressively as the story builds and adds in a raft of odious characters- Not afraid to name names - some of the politicians ultimately come in for some serious whacking (see Sens. Wheeler and Langer especially). Also surprising were the back stories of names I recognize (architect Philip Johnson, for example) without knowing of their nazi sympathies and antisemitism.- Mr. and Mrs. Lindbergh are waaay more complicated than our stereotypes of the heroic but opaque pilot and his saintly wife (she is one scary piece of work!) - stuff I simply didn't know, and what was presented was alarming to the extent of making skin crawl- I had never heard of the sedition trials of 1943 and 1944 and prosecutor John Rogge at all before - just one example of new (and stunning) information from our history - absolute bedlam!- As the history advances and the book nears its end, there are several BIG events that may push you back in your reading chair several times - again, no spoilers, but hoo-eee!- The epilogue was a treat to read - again, I won't reveal any spoilersA minor criticism - the book is derived (I believe) from Rachel's podcasts, and thus the writing has her inimitable voice (pointed asides, etc.), but as a result may lack some polish and smoothness in the prose. Some may love it, some may carp, some may not even notice it. Whatever.If material about this period is of interest to the reader, be certain to seek out "Hitler in Los Angeles" by Steven J. Ross - its focus is a little narrower, dealing with Jewish undercover work to foil Nazi plotting in Los Angeles, but Leon Lewis, a true mensch and hero, is in Maddow's book as well.

Rachel Maddow is stellar as a writer and a historical author and this book is a must read especially now in this political climate. I appreciate her ability to build a complete narrative around her subjects and to end with the shocking warning about history repeating itself . A++++++

An absolute MUST READ! Rachel Maddow has another book coming out and I can't wait to read it. The threats to democracy under a would-be-dictator president are real - and we've been here before. Fore-warned is fore-armed.

Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” recounts the efforts of pro-fascists in the United States, aided and manipulated by Nazi Germany, to keep America from actively opposing Hitler as well as to plot ways to turn America into a fascist country. The struggle to defeat those forces began in the early 1930s led by private citizens who, on their own, went undercover to join fascist groups and try to alert various government agencies about what was happening. A relatively small number of fascists gathered weapons to prepare for an insurrection. In the last chapters of the book, Maddow describes a 1944 trial in which the Justice Department brought sedition charges against some 30 defendants, most of whose activities she covered in previous chapters. The trial was chaotic, interrupted by frequent outbursts from the defendants and their lawyers. When the judge suddenly died one night of heart attack and a mistrial was declared, the Justice Department did not seek a new trial. The war against Hitler was nearing an end, so there was no push to revisit the past to pronounce judgment on those whose activities on the home front ultimately did not affect our victory over the Nazis.Since the ending is rather anticlimactic, Maddow, at times, may try a little too hard to make things sound more dire than they really were. Although elsewhere she has described Westbrook Pegler as an “extreme” right wing columnist and “pseudo-fascist,” she quotes him at the end of her chapter on Huey Long as averring that, in Louisiana, Long was “gradually copying the Hitler state.” Long was certainly a corrupt, authoritarian politician, but his populist politics had their origins in his upbringing in Winn Parish, where the Socialist Party carried the day in the 1912 election. Had he lived and had he run for president in 1936, he might have drawn enough votes from FDR to give the election to a Republican candidate, but he had no use for Nazism. (I live in Louisiana where, until 1973, we observed Huey’s birthday as a state holiday.)Maddow seems to imply that there was something nefarious about the death in 1940 of Senator Ernest Lundeen in a passenger airplane crash that occurred during a thunderstorm. Lundeen, who had close ties to a top Nazi spy, may have been under investigation, but nothing indicates that his presence on the flight had anything to do with the crash. The cause was never determined, but, based on the way the plane headed forcibly into the ground, a likely explanation is that it was caught in the kind of thunderstorm microbursts that we now know has caused similar crashes.Though, for me, the book seems to promise a bit more than it actually delivers, I did learn a lot about the ties of right wing politics to Nazism during that era.I was aware that Henry Ford was a fanatical antisemite, but, until I read Maddow’s book, I did not know that his efforts extended to publishing a ninety-two part series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that appeared in the Dearborn Independent, a newspaper that he owned, with copies distributed to every Ford dealership. It was published in book form as “The International Jew” and widely circulated in Germany. Hitler praised Ford in “Mein Kampf” and, according to one account, had a portrait of Ford displayed on the wall in his office when he was visited by an American reporter.I was aware that the Nazis studied segregation in the American South for guidance in drafting their own race laws, but I didn’t know that Nazi Germany dispatched an attorney to the University of Arkansas School of Law to acquire first-hand knowledge.I was aware that Father Coughlin was a demagogic opponent of FDR, but I was not aware of the ferocity of his antisemitism or his ties to various pro-Nazi fascists.However, I was really totally unaware of the way actual Nazi agents in league with pro-Nazi Americans were able to get congressmen and senators to distribute Nazi propaganda, typically inserted into the Congressional Record and then sent to millions of Americans for free using the congressional franking privilege. On the other hand, I doubt that propaganda delivered in that manner was very effective. Pages from the Congressional Record could not compete with the message delivered by the 1939 Warner Brothers film “Confessions of a Nazi Spy,” the first anti-Nazi movie produced by Hollywood, based on actual events that Maddow describes.Nothing pro-fascists did in the United States affected our entry into the war against Germany. We went to war when Hitler himself declared war on us four days after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Nazi Germany certainly posed a military threat, but there wasn’t much danger that fascist politics would actually prevail in the United States.The political situation is very different today and, though I, like Maddow, admire the “smart, brave, determined, resourceful, self-sacrificing [anti-fascist] Americans who went before us,” I think the political challenges we face today are much more dire.

Another amazing, non fiction book which proves that history may not always repeat itself, but it most definitely rhymes. If you think history & politics aren't your "thing," give Ms. Maddow a try! Mind-blowing factual events you probably didn't learn in school. Written with an injection of her unique humor at the acts of alarming international events. Very timely book for understanding the world we are living in@

Fascinating. I learned more about our political history than I ever expected to know. This is the book for the times. If you are interested in how our country got where we are today, on every page you will read about events that you have never been taught. Rachael Maddow is informed and passionate about what she is writing about. As far as pertinent and informative, this book is on with Howard Zinn;s "A People's History of the United States".

Good read