Miller’s study of Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, presents a plausible account of America’s slow descent from the 1950s into the abyss of post-truth politics.

... Welch’s white supremacy is addressed in direct terms, though the book’s discussions of his antisemitism are less clear.

Edward H. Miller’s eye-opener of a biography claims that reports of Welch’s banishment have been greatly exaggerated—at least when measured by the enduring influence of his thinking. Miller argues that today’s politics of fact-free conspiracies owe much to Welch, an interesting character who (paranoid conspiracy theories aside) was a serious player in conservative politics from the 1950s through to the 1980s. He emerges from Miller’s telling as an example of the symbiosis of anti-tax, anti-regulation Main Street businessmen, anti-Communist ideologues and social conservatives who helped shape the modern GOP.

... [an] immersive biography.

... sometimes tedious.