Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America.

• Date: 01 August 2019
• Author: Sorensen, Ben

MacLean, Nancy, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2017. xxxiv + 334 pages. $28.00.

Nancy MacLean has a well-earned reputation as an upstanding, influential labor historian; indeed, she is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. Her previous publications are respected by all who are interested in leftist history and politics: her Behind the Mask of Chivalry provides a seminal look at the inner workings of the Ku Klux Klan, and Freedom is Not Enough explores her theory that the civil rights movement also changed the workplace into an environment of celebrated inclusion. Thus, one would expect her newest work, Democracy in Chains, to make similar contributions to the historiography by exploring the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan's Public Choice Theory and his influence on the "radical right."

MacLean brilliantly researched Buchanan's papers by sifting through his office at George Mason University and exploring the influences that helped him form his political and economic outlook. MacLean writes...