Good book
I was about to skim the last 200 pages of the book, but decided to read it. The author who is an American academic who teaches at a U. K. college,
traces the history of two phrases: the American dream and America first
The first is associated with liberals; the second with conservatives, and she tracks the first to the 1920s,the second to the birth of the country. She ,closes the book with an attack on the Trumps.

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In her enlightening book Behold America, Sarah Churchwell looks into the history of these two phrases and explores how their evolution, both their myths and their truths, had shaped reality in ways that are not yet fully understood. She looks into how did people use these phrases in the past across the U.S., how they emerged, about the same time, a hundred years ago, in 1916, and how they both became part of the American political conversation in different ways, not as ideas but as catchphrases.

The way a phrase evolves and the chains of association that are formed intuitively or unconsciously as one idea, define the political and social realities. It is surprising and instructive to see how these associations explain the situation that the U.S. is now.

In order to fight the danger of resurgence of fascism, you need to know the history. Fascists are masters of political theatre, they feed on peoples’ grievances; they demonize groups of people, and they present themselves as national saviours. They seek to subvert and eliminate liberal institutions. With her book Behold America, Sarah Churchwell remind us of the danger that U.S is facing and presents arguments to fight back against authoritarianism and white nationalist policies. ( )

Churchwell tracks the uses of these phrases to earlier than they’re usually identified (thank you, Google). Her main argument—and it’s probably not worth reading a whole book on this—is that the American dream starts out as a dream of equal opportunity and civic responsibility, rather than a solipsistic dream of personal wealth accumulation. America First, by contrast, pretty much always meant racism and exclusion. A good line: “[Code words like America First] are there to muddy the waters: to keep people from seeing their own faces in the pool.” ( )