Description:
"Kelly tells this story with vivid immediacy."-ADAM HOCHSCHILD
"A sweeping and much needed work of history."-GREG GRANDIN
Brief description: Joseph Kelly is a professor of literature and history at the College of Charleston. He is the author of two other books on American democracy: Marooned and America's Longest Siege. He also wrote Our Joyce: From Outcast to Icon and he edits the popular Seagull Reader anthologies of stories, poems, plays, and essays. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
Review Quotes:
"The word fascism might have its roots in ancient Rome, and as an ideology saw its largest manifestations in the nations of Europe, but it is not, argues Kelly, an import to the United States. Drawing a straight line between the Christian nationalism of the antebellum South to the enthusiastic Nazi crowds of 1930s Wisconsin, The Biggest Lie reveals the dark origins of America's homegrown (and still growing?) version of fascism." --Lit Hub
"Kelly's writing is passionate and persuasive." --Irish Independent "[A] penetrating study... Readers will find this a striking, potent reframing of fascism as an American invention." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "This well-researched volume is extremely important and timely." --Library Journal, Starred Review "An extraordinary and timely contribution to our understanding of American political history." --The Midwest Book Review "Historian Joseph Kelly has put together a tight, well-told history of the ups and downs of racial prejudice." --David Wineberg, The Straight Dope "About the madness of Trump's America, it's easy to feel: This is unprecedented. But, as Joseph Kelly brilliantly shows, it's not. And without full knowledge of that painful history, we're not going to find our way to a better, more just country. Kelly tells this story with vivid immediacy." --Adam Hochschild, author of the NBCC and NBA finalist KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST and AMERICAN MIDNIGHT "A sweeping and much needed work of history, Joseph Kelly's The Biggest Lie traces the roots of United States fascism not to the twentieth century but back to the first decades of the republic, particular to the expansion of the country's slave system. The Biggest Lie is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the deep historical currents shaping the United States today. It is a masterwork of historical synthesis." --Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE END OF THE MYTH and AMERICA, AMÉRICA "In this retelling of America's past, Joseph Kelly challenges the familiar narrative of a liberal society, founded on ideals of human equality, defeating the Southern elite that grew out of slavery. In Kelly's telling, the South's effort to secede was defeated in 1865, but its ideology of inequality infected the entire nation by 1915. This provocative and wonderfully written book could not be more timely." --Don H. Doyle, author of THE CAUSE OF ALL NATIONS and THE AGE OF RECONSTRUCTION