Description

National Book Award finalist Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, delivers a lecture on the Virginia-specific roots of the radical political right. A book sale, signing and reception follow the talk.

The event is free and open to all. Parking is available for a fee in the West Broad Street, West Main Street and West Cary Street parking decks. For special accommodations, or to register offline, please contact the VCU Libraries Events Office at (804) 828-0593.

About the Book

Behind today's headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of 20th-century American self-government.

About the Speaker

Nancy MacLean, Ph.D., is an American historian and author. She is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. Her research focusses on race, gender, labor history and social movements in 20th-century U.S. history, with particular attention to the U.S. South. Her book Democracy in Chains is a finalist for the National Book Award for nonfiction.

Image: Democracy in Chains, by Emily Kundrot/Nancy MacLean photo, courtesy of Nancy MacLean