rachel maddow prequel book tour dates

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Rachel maddow, 'prequel' book tour dates announced.

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Rachel Maddow alerts viewers that the details of her book tour in support of the forthcoming "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" have been finalized and published at msnbc.com/Prequel. Aug. 29, 2023

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'Prequel' book tour dates announced

Posted: August 29, 2023 | Last updated: April 11, 2024

Rachel Maddow alerts viewers that the details of her book tour in support of the forthcoming "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" have been finalized and published at msnbc.com/Prequel.

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Progressive Forum Presents Rachel Maddow in Houston, June 13, 2024

Paying attendees will receive a free copy of Prequel and a signed bookplate. General admission tickets are $35, $45, and $70, while reserved seats are $95.

The event is generously sponsored by Mike and Jenny Blocher, Ann Hamilton, and Poppi Massey.

“Rachel became an instant fan favorite in her last appearance in 2013; it’s exciting to welcome her back to Houston,” said Progressive Forum founder Randall Morton.

About Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism

About Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow is the Emmy Award-winning host of “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Drift and Blowout.  Born in Castro Valley, California, Maddow received a BA in public policy from Stanford University and earned a doctorate at Oxford, where she studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula. She appeared at The Progressive Forum March 10, 2013, discussing Drift. View her past performance here.

Rachel Maddow Book Tour 2024 Schedule: Unveiling the Dates and Locations

Rachel Maddow’s book tour schedule for 2024 has been announced, featuring events in cities like Austin, Boulder, Seattle, Phoenix, Chicago, and Massachusetts. With tickets available for purchase, fans can look forward to engaging with Rachel Maddow and hearing her discuss her latest book, “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.”

Don’t miss this opportunity to attend one of the tour events and gain unique insights into current political issues from one of the most influential voices in journalism. Visit MSNBC. com/Prequel for more information and to secure your tickets.

Credit: www.advocate.com

Introduction To Rachel Maddow Book Tour 2024

Rachel Maddow is embarking on her highly anticipated Book Tour 2024. The tour will feature events in various cities across the United States, including Austin, Texas. Rachel Maddow is a renowned television host and political commentator, best known for her show on MSNBC, “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

The book tour is in support of her latest book, which is a prequel to her previous works. The book offers an insider’s perspective on the fight against fascism in America and delves into the events leading up to the current political climate. It provides a thought-provoking analysis of the nation’s history and the challenges faced by its citizens.

Rachel Maddow’s book tour is of great importance as it allows readers to gain a deeper understanding of the political landscape in America. It also provides an opportunity for fans of Rachel Maddow to engage with her directly and ask questions about her work and the book.

Credit: www.msnbc.com

Announcement Of ‘prequel’ Book Tour Dates

There are many ways to stay updated with the latest news about Rachel Maddow’s upcoming book tour. One of the sources is MSNBC News , which recently announced the ‘Prequel’ book tour dates on their website and YouTube channel. The coverage on MSNBC News includes a 1:20-minute news segment about the announcement. Another video, which is 1:41-minute long, can be found on the MSNBC YouTube channel. Additionally, MSNBC.com also has a video about the blowout book tour dates and locations, running for 1:33 minutes. For more insights, Rachel Maddow herself appeared on the TODAY show, discussing the ‘Prequel’ book and the challenges of the past year in a 6:06-minute interview on YouTube. Stay tuned to these sources for further updates.

Ticket Information And Book Details

For fans eagerly awaiting Rachel Maddow’s 2024 book tour, ticket prices and availability have been announced. To attend one of the tour events, you can purchase tickets through TicketSmarter, where you can find Lecture Tickets. Rachel Maddow’s new book, titled ‘Prequel’, is set to be a captivating exploration of the fight against fascism in America. If you’re interested in learning more about the book, you can visit Penguin Random House’s website for additional details. As for Rachel Maddow’s popular show, you can catch it on MSNBC. The Rachel Maddow Show airs on this network, and it delivers insightful and thought-provoking content. Additionally, for listeners who prefer radio, Rachel Maddow hosts The Rachel Maddow Show radio program.

Credit: www.amazon.com

Frequently Asked Questions Of Rachel Maddow Book Tour 2024 Schedule

How much are tickets to see rachel maddow.

Tickets to see Rachel Maddow can be purchased through TicketSmarter. Visit their website for more information.

What Is Rachel Maddow’s New Book About?

Rachel Maddow’s new book, “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism,” explores the history and current struggles against fascism in the United States.

What Channel Is The Rachel Maddow Show On?

The Rachel Maddow show airs on MSNBC.

Does Rachel Maddow Have A Radio Show?

Yes, Rachel Maddow does have a radio show called “The Rachel Maddow Show (radio program). “

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to catch Rachel Maddow on her highly anticipated book tour in 2024. With dates in cities like Seattle, Phoenix, and Chicago, you’ll have multiple chances to see this influential figure in person. Get your tickets now and be a part of the conversation as she discusses her new book, ‘Prequel,’ and the fight against fascism.

Visit ticket websites like TicketSmarter or SeatGeek for more information and secure your spot at one of these insightful and thought-provoking events. Don’t delay, as tickets are selling fast!

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Rachel Maddow

Official personal website, prequel by rachel maddow.

“A ripping read—well rendered, fast-paced and delivered with the same punch and assurance that she brings to a broadcast. . . . The parallels to the present day are strong, even startling.” —The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century.

Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.

That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.

At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.

None of it went as planned.

While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.

That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.

Available in Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook and Large Print: Amazon        Barnes and Noble       Books A Million        IndieBound       Bookshop.org       Hudson Booksellers       Powell’s       Walmart

PRAISE for PREQUEL:

“Maddow’s book is a ripping read—well rendered, fast-paced and delivered with the same punch and assurance that she brings to a broadcast. . . . Prequel is a valuable window into the authoritarian mind-set—and the process by which self-professed patriots turn against democracy . . . the parallels to the present day are strong, even startling . . .” — The New York Times

“[A] vivid, urgent, smart history,” and “Maddow makes a vital contribution to the history of armed fascism in the United States.” — The Washington Post

“Maddow’s sublime research into the precursors of current existential threats is astonishingly deep. She finds rabbit holes even rabbits are unaware of.” — Booklist , starred review “America beat fascism once. Maddow’s timely study of enemies on the homefront urges that we can do so again.” — Kirkus , starred reviews

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Rachel maddow with michael mcfaul - prequel (golden gate theater san francisco).

Rachel Maddow In conversation with Michael McFaul

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism

Saturday., Oct. 21st, 2023 • 4:00pm PT Golden Gate Theater San Francisco

This event is presented in partnership with BroadwaySF at the Golden Gate Theater. 

Each ticket includes a copy of  Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism .

BroadwaySF and Book Passage welcome you to an extraordinary on-stage event with Emmy Award–winning  host and #1 New York Times- bestselling author Rachel Maddow . Delve into the world of current events, politics, and insightful analysis as Maddow takes the stage to share her unique perspectives, answer audience questions, and speak about her new book PREQUEL . Inspired by the research for her #1 Apple podcast, Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra , from MSNBC, PREQUEL traces the rise of a radical strain of authoritarianism that has been alive and well in America for the better part of a century.  As we navigate through our own disquieting times, PREQUEL offers a roadmap from U.S. history, marked both with heroics to emulate and traps and pitfalls to avoid.

Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.   Inspired by her research for the hit podcast  Ultra,   Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.   That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.   At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.   None of it went as planned.   While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.   That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.

Rachel Maddow  is host of the Emmy Award–winning  Rachel Maddow Show  on MSNBC, as well as the #1  New York Times  bestselling author of  Drift  and  Blowout,  and the  New York Times  bestselling co-author of  Bag Man . Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula.

Dr. McFaul also is an International Affairs Analyst for NBC News and a columnist for The Washington Post . He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012- 2014).

He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia . Earlier books include Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (eds. with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin . He is currently writing a book called Autocrats versus Democrats: Lessons from the Cold War for Competing with China and Russia Today .

His teaches courses on great power relations, democratization, comparative foreign policy decision-making, and revolutions.

Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. In International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. His D. Phil thesis was Southern African Liberation and Great Power Intervention: Towards a Theory of Revolution in an International Context .

Rachel Maddow - photo courtesy of NBCUniversal Media LLC™ ; Michael McFaul - photo courtesy of the publicist

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Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism (Hardcover)

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Is There Fascist DNA in the U.S. Body Politic?

Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel” and Heather Cox Richardson’s “Democracy Awakening” follow plots against America hatched by homegrown autocrats.

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By Jeff Shesol

Jeff Shesol is the author, most recently, of “Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy, and the New Battleground of the Cold War.”

PREQUEL: An American Fight Against Fascism , by Rachel Maddow

DEMOCRACY AWAKENING: Notes on the State of America , by Heather Cox Richardson

“Our contemporaries,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1840, in the second volume of “ Democracy in America ,” “are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free.” The result was a peculiarly American compromise, an abiding tension between state power and popular sovereignty.

Tocqueville had faith that Americans could keep the two in balance. At the same time, he warned against a slide into “democratic despotism.” The people, he wrote, might someday vote to cede their power and place the government “in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons.” Having witnessed the rise of American democracy, Tocqueville also, it seems, foretold its decline.

Authoritarianism in America so far lacks its Tocqueville, its defining chronicler, but a number of recent books have shed light on what is called, euphemistically, “ democratic backsliding .” Some authors, like the historian Anne Applebaum, look to Europe’s fascist resurgence for analogies and influences . Others, among them the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, see the Constitution and the counter-majoritarians on the Supreme Court as the key enablers of unrepresentative government. Now, a pair of new books — one by the longtime TV news host Rachel Maddow, the other by Heather Cox Richardson, a Boston College historian and the writer of a popular Substack newsletter — trace different paths to our present state of peril.

Richardson roams widely across the landscape of American history, while Maddow focuses on the eve of World War II, when homegrown fascists sought to create an American Reich. Both reveal that authoritarianism is embedded in the American genome — an age-old mutation that, given the right circumstances, will express itself, sometimes violently.

“Prequel,” which began as a podcast, follows groups of malcontents as they worked — determinedly if haplessly — to bring a bloody end to the American experiment. During the 1930s, paramilitary organizations with names like the Silver Legion, the Christian Front and the American White Guard planned acts of domestic terror, aiming to create chaos as a pretext for fascists to seize power. Nazi fetishists like Philip Johnson — later an acclaimed architect — set out in search of an American Hitler. (Johnson’s choice was the Louisiana senator Huey Long.) Others promised genocide. “There will be more Jew corpses cluttering up American gutters,” vowed the American White Guard founder Henry Allen, “than ever were found in the most ambitious European pogroms.”

They were fanatics, but as Maddow shows, they had powerful friends. Hundreds of New York City police officers joined the Christian Front in the late 1930s; National Guardsmen supplied the group with weapons. Isolationists in Congress recited talking points drawn up by the German Foreign Office in Berlin, vilifying Franklin D. Roosevelt and urging the United States to stay out of the war. One senator, Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota, had a Nazi agent as a speechwriter.

Another senator, Montana’s Burton Wheeler, lent his congressional frank — a facsimile signature that allowed mail to be sent free of charge — to groups aligned with, and financed by, Germany. He was hardly alone, Maddow explains. As a federal prosecutor later revealed, at least two dozen members of Congress lent their franks to the German cause. In this way, more than three million pieces of Nazi propaganda ended up at American homes, businesses, schools and in the hands of active-duty soldiers. “Our strategy,” Hitler had said in 1933, “is to destroy the enemy from within.” Clearly, he had a good deal of help.

Maddow’s book is a ripping read — well rendered, fast-paced and delivered with the same punch and assurance that she brings to a broadcast. Perhaps, at times, too much punch: Her writing often tends toward the knowing wisecrack, the elbow in the ribs. Philip Johnson is a “gazillionaire”; Huey Long sends “a big F-U to F.D.R.”; events elicit a “meh” or an “oy vey.”

Tics aside, “Prequel” is a valuable window into the authoritarian mind-set — and the process by which self-professed patriots turn against democracy. If the book’s title is a little on the nose, the parallels to the present day are strong, even startling: the call to restore a fictional, monocultural past; the myth of white Christian victimization; the open antisemitism and the glorification of violence; the swooning for strongmen.

America’s Nazis never got close to their goals, but their hatreds received a wide airing, and as Maddow concludes, they bound “isolationism, antisemitism and fascism” into an “ominously tight weave.”

These same threads, among others, run through Heather Cox Richardson’s work. The appeal of her newsletter is clear: For many progressives, Richardson’s near-daily dispatches about the state of the nation serve as moral and intellectual sustenance — a reaffirmation of America’s founding principles and a sense that our troubles will pass, if not without struggle. “Democracy Awakening” provides a more panoramic view of the same picture, assessing how America landed “on the brink of authoritarianism,” as Richardson puts it, and how we might pull back from the edge.

The resulting book is odd and unfocused. It is structured, in effect, as three pocket histories. The first, a condensed account of modern conservatism, locates the origin of our current crisis in the 1930s, with the right-wing reaction to the New Deal; en route to the present, Richardson makes quick stops at William F. Buckley’s attack on godless liberalism in the academy , Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy and the foreign policy of Ronald Reagan, which she bills as a “flirtation with authoritarianism.” The second is a recap of Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump, in this telling (as in actual fact), is Tocqueville’s democratic despot: a duly elected leader who, as Richardson observes, rejected “the idea that ordinary people had a right to govern themselves.”

The third section — titled “Reclaiming America” — swings back to the founding to trace the idea of equality through the New Deal, the Great Society and the presidency of Joe Biden. Wars are waged; heroes are named; programs are passed; and what it all means can be hard to discern.

Richardson’s theme, as it emerges, is that a “hierarchical strand” runs through our history. This seems the story she most wants to tell: equality and its discontents. Authoritarianism, in “Democracy Awakening,” is less a system of one-man rule or the subordination of the self to the state than a belief that “some people are better than others” and are entitled, therefore, to rule.

It is true, of course, that dictatorship is the most potent expression of the idea that, in Orwell’s words, some are “more equal than others.” It’s also beyond question that inegalitarianism in America, as Richardson describes, has manifested itself — and still does — in police-state tactics, in scapegoating and race hatred, in the repression of voting rights, in official lies large and small. In other words, it can look a lot like authoritarianism in its undiluted form. The fact that the Nazi regime saw Jim Crow laws as a model, which both books mention, was not incidental.

Yet as a diagnosis of what ails America, the conflation of hierarchy and autocracy goes only so far. A sense of superiority, a feeling of entitlement, an eagerness for power over others can all coexist with democracy, however uneasily. This is the cognitive dissonance of American life. But what Trump has exposed and exploited is even more malign than the idea that we are not created equal; it is the idea that others are not only less than us but less than human. To reclaim our country, in Richardson’s phrase, we must know our history, though it might be less instructive than that of Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland.

PREQUEL: An American Fight Against Fascism | By Rachel Maddow | Illustrated | 382 pp. | Crown | $32

DEMOCRACY AWAKENING: Notes on the State of America | By Heather Cox Richardson | 286 pp. | Viking | $30

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GET TICKETS AT TICKETMASTER HERE >  Changing Hands Bookstore presents an evening with #1 New York Times bestselling author Rachel Maddow, host of the Emmy Award-winning The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC and the #1 Apple podcast, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra . She'll discuss her new book, PREQUEL: An American Fight Against Fascism , at Arizona Financial Theatre. Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis. Through the heroic resistance of journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens, their goal was never achieved . . . but the seeds of extremism were planted and have reached forward through history into our present. As we navigate our own disquieting times, PREQUEL offers a roadmap from U.S. history, marked both with heroics to emulate and traps and pitfalls to avoid.  ABOUT THE LIVE EVENT

• Tickets required.
• All tickets are general admission
• Ticket admits one (1) and includes one (1) hardcover copy of Prequel,  which will be handed out at check-in.
• Books are unsigned. There will be no booksigning or meet-and-greet after the program.
• No refunds or exchanges.

GET TICKETS AT TICKETMASTER HERE >  ABOUT THE BOOK

Inspired by her research for the hit podcast, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Presents:  Ultra,  Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.   That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.   At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.   None of it went as planned.   While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.   That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that un-slain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award-winning The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as well as the #1  New York Times  bestselling author of  Drift  and  Blowout , and the  New   York   Times  bestselling co-author of  Bag Man . Maddow has also written, produced and hosted three original podcasts for MSNBC— Rachel Maddow Presents: Bag Man , Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra , and most recently the six-episode series Rachel Maddow Presents: Deja News , which debuted in June at #1 on Apple Podcasts. Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula.  

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In her next book ‘Prequel,’ Rachel Maddow will explore a WWII-era plot to overthrow US government

FILE - MSNBC television anchor Rachel Maddow, host of the Rachel Maddow Show, moderates a panel, Monday, Oct. 16, 2017, at a forum called “Perspectives on National Security,” at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass. Maddow’s next book will be an exploration into right-wing extremism in the U.S., including a plot to overthrow the government at the start of World War II. Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced Monday, July 31, 2023, that Maddow’s “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” will be published Oct. 17. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Rachel Maddow’s next book will be an exploration into right-wing extremism in the U.S., including a plot to overthrow the government at the start of World War II.

Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced Monday that Maddow’s “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” will be published Oct. 17. The book expands upon research for the liberal author-commentator’s podcast “Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra,” for which Steven Spielberg has acquired film rights.

“Just as I like to dive into the backstory and deep origins of any particular news event, I also find it helpful to know if we’ve previously contended with something like what we’re seeing in today’s news,” the Emmy-winning MSNBC host, who discussed the book on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Monday night, said in a statement released by Crown.

“Even though I find it disturbing and a little scary that, in our own time, some sizeable chunk of Americans seem ready to jettison real elections and instead embrace rule by force, it’s somehow heartening to me to know that this isn’t a brand new challenge - another sizeable chunk of Americans felt essentially the same way in the lead-up to World War II.”

In “Prequel,” Maddow will describe anti-government actions involving a Nazi agent, more than 20 members of Congress and the anti-Semitic America First Committee that led to a 1944 sedition trial, which ended in a mistrial.

Maddow’s previous books include “Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth” and “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power.”

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Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism Audio CD – Unabridged, November 14, 2023

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• Print length 14 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Random House Audio
• Publication date November 14, 2023
• Dimensions 5.07 x 1.05 x 5.85 inches
• ISBN-10 0593868315
• ISBN-13 978-0593868317
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Audio; Unabridged edition (November 14, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Audio CD ‏ : ‎ 14 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593868315
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593868317
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.07 x 1.05 x 5.85 inches
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About the author

Rachel maddow.

Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award–winning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as well as the author of Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, a #1 New York Times bestseller. Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula. photo credit: MSNBC Media, LLC

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Join us for an in-person & virtual  Live Talks Los Angeles event:   Friday, October 27, 2023, 6pm PT/9pm ET

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. An Evening with  Rachel Maddow   in conversation with Jacob Soboroff . discussing her book,  Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism . TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR THE VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (virtual event only, Oct 27) $50 Virtual Admission* + book,  6pm PT/9pm ET (US Orders Only. Includes shipping to US addresses only) *Event is available on video-on-demand for five days after it airs, thru Nov 1. Books ship one week after event

Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.   . Rachel Maddow  is host of the Emmy Award–winning  The Rachel Maddow Show  on MSNBC. She is the  New York Times  bestselling author of   Drift  and  Blowout , and the  New York Times  bestselling co-author of  Bag Man . She has also written, produced and hosted three original podcasts for MSNBC— Rachel Maddow Presents: Bag Man ,  Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra , and most recently the six-episode series  Rachel Maddow Presents: Deja News . Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University.  . In her new book,  Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism,  based on research for her podcast,  Ultra , Maddow traces the rise of a radical strain of authoritarianism that has been alive and well in America for the better part of a century.   . Taking readers back to the early days of World War II, Maddow introduces us to a clandestine network of far-far-right American radicals, who through a series of sophisticated and shockingly well-funded efforts—including an astonishing amount of support among serving members of Congress—would bring America into a much closer flirtation with fascism than we want to remember. . The resistance of journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens ensured that their goal was never achieved, but the seeds of extremism were planted and have reached forward through history into our present. As we navigate through our own disquieting times,  Prequel   offers a roadmap from U.S. history, marked both with heroics to emulate and traps and pitfalls to avoid.  . Jacob Soboroff is an NBC News correspondent and the author of the New York Times best seller,  Separated: Inside an American Tragedy. For his reporting on the Trump administration’s child separation policy, he received the Walter Cronkite Award for Individual Achievement by a National Journalist and the Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism. He is also the recipient of a Ruben Salazar Journalism Award from the California Chicano News Media Association, and in 2022 was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy® Award for his reporting from Haiti. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Nicole Cari and their two children.

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In her next book ‘Prequel,’ Rachel Maddow will explore a WWII-era plot to overthrow US government

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Rachel Maddow’s next book will be an exploration into right-wing extremism in the U.S., including a plot to overthrow the government at the start of World War II.

Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced Monday that Maddow’s “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” will be published Oct. 17. The book expands upon research for the liberal author-commentator’s podcast “Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra,” for which Steven Spielberg has acquired film rights.

“Just as I like to dive into the backstory and deep origins of any particular news event, I also find it helpful to know if we’ve previously contended with something like what we’re seeing in today’s news,” the Emmy-winning MSNBC host, who discussed the book on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Monday night, said in a statement released by Crown.

“Even though I find it disturbing and a little scary that, in our own time, some sizeable chunk of Americans seem ready to jettison real elections and instead embrace rule by force, it’s somehow heartening to me to know that this isn’t a brand new challenge - another sizeable chunk of Americans felt essentially the same way in the lead-up to World War II.”

In “Prequel,” Maddow will describe anti-government actions involving a Nazi agent, more than 20 members of Congress and the anti-Semitic America First Committee that led to a 1944 sedition trial, which ended in a mistrial.

Maddow’s previous books include “Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth” and “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power.”

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Rachel Maddow's Prequel Is a Deceptively Framed History of the Radical Right

The book blames foreign subversives for ideas long rooted in american life..

Brandan P. Buck | 10.31.2023 1:31 PM

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism , by Rachel Maddow, Crown, 416 pages, $32

"American democracy itself was under attack from enemies within and without," Rachel Maddow writes in Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism . If you're not sure whether she is speaking of the past or the present, that's because she wants to conflate the two.

Prequel is a deeply flawed and deceptively framed history of right-wing radicalism in the United States on the eve of American entry into World War II. Maddow's treatment of this well-worn topic draws principally from primary sources generated from the protagonists of her story, a collection of private spies and anti-fascist activists, as well as contemporary press reporting, sundry government documents, and a narrow base of secondary sources, one that noticeably omits prominent works in the field. Deficiencies in her sources, methods, and analyses make for a book that recapitulates past passions at the expense of sober reflection and reality.

Maddow opens with her strongest case study, covering the German-born Nazi agent George Sylvester Viereck, who tried to push Americans toward neutrality by using personal connections with Congress to spread noninterventionist literature. She then switches focus to her weakest case study, that of populist Democratic governor and senator Huey "Kingfish" Long and his influence on the Nazi sympathizers Philip Johnson and Gerald L.K. Smith. Maddow does not clarify why Long, who died in 1935, is discussed here. But her tone and source selection imply that she agrees with the Kingfish's contemporary critics that his populism and demagoguery made him a proto-fascist and a political gateway drug for more radical figures, like Johnson and Smith.

Maddow then abruptly changes focus to the dark history of American segregation and its influence on Nazi racial science, following the German lawyer Heinrich Krieger's travels through the American South. Then she circles back to more-prominent characters, such as the American fascist Lawrence Dennis, the antisemitic preacher Charles Coughlin, and the abstruse spiritualist (and leader of the fascist Silver Shirts) William Dudley Pelley, among others.

The book's first half is occasionally productive. The chapter on Pelley does a good job of exploring the roots of his ideology: his conflation of anti-communism with antisemitism, his eclectic spiritualism, his millenarian Christianity. And the chapter on American race law is a haunting look at how American legislatures maintained racial hierarchy and what the Nazis learned from their practices.

But what narrative value she creates is relinquished by her analytical leaps, which conflate fascism with phenomena that were already well-grounded in American life well before the 1920s. And Maddow never directly states the size and scope of the groups she covers, such as the German American Bund and the Silver Shirts; instead we get such vague phrases as "many," "a lot," and "an insane number." This makes it easier to confuse the breadth of Maddow's cast of characters for the depth of their influence. (According to historian Francis MacDonnell's Insidious Foes , the German American Bund never attracted more than 25,000 members and the Silver Shirts maxed out at 15,000.)

The book's meandering journey narrows in later chapters, as Maddow argues that German propaganda had a pervasive influence on "isolationist" congressmen. She presents the propagandists' efforts as far more effective than they were, giving the impression that they were the root of Americans' general desire to stay out of World War II. She pays only lip service to the deeper roots of "isolationism," with a mere passing reference to the fallout from World War I. She does not mention the post-WWI revelations of Allied and American propaganda, the widespread alarm at the armaments industry's intimate relationship with the government , or the Great War's domestic abuses of civil liberties. (When Sen. Ernest Lundeen (R–Minn.) denounces a draft bill as "nothing short of slavery," she dismisses him as "shrill.") Instead, she writes as though the desire to remain neutral simply stemmed from abroad, stripping noninterventionism of its historical context and arguing that the "threads of isolationism, antisemitism, and fascism were becoming an ominously tight weave."

To make her case, Maddow retells a well-worn story about Viereck's use of the congressional frank, a taxpayer-funded mailing service, to distribute what Maddow calls "pro-German mailings." In fact, it was predominately literature that advocated neutrality. As historian Douglas M. Charles argued in J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists , "All Viereck managed to accomplish was a wider distribution of anti-interventionist literature that, in any event, did not lead Americans to reassess their views on the Allies."

Her book culminates in the 1944 sedition trial, in which the United States federal government charged a heterogeneous and largely unaffiliated assortment of 30 defendants, which included far-right figures like George Sylvester Viereck, Lawrence Dennis, and William Dudley Pelley, for sedition under the 1940 Smith Act. She presents the episode as a missed opportunity to uproot homegrown fascism. In fact, the Justice Department filed its flimsy charges on politically motivated grounds —a clear threat to constitutionally protected speech and association, no matter how unsympathetic the defendants could be.

Throughout  Prequel , Maddow displays a systemically uncritical use of her source material, frequently presenting the self-gratifying hyperbole of fascist propagandists and the motivated reasoning of anti-fascist reporters as gospel.

Whether she knows it or not, Maddow is dredging up a thesis from the past, written in the wake of World War II when passions were high and perspectives blinkered. This view does have some academic adherents, and she cites their work: Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends , James Q. Whitman's  Hitler's American Model , Sarah Churchwell's Behold, America , Steven J. Ross's  Hitler in Los Angeles , and others. But she drives her thesis beyond the confines of her evidence in a manner that these scholars do not. Hart, for example, hedges where Maddow does not, acknowledging that the "United States was not at risk of an imminent fascist takeover in the late 1930s" when he argues that there was "fertile terrain in which dictatorship might be able to take root." Yet Maddow leaves the impression that there was a risk of an imminent fascist takeover in the 1930s, with German propaganda fertilizing that fertile terrain.

Meanwhile, there is a sizeable body of work that challenges Maddow's thesis and that of her source material. Such works include established scholarship such as Leo Ribuffo's  The Old Christian Right , Deborah Lipstadt's  Beyond Belief ,   and Bruce Kuklick's recent Fascism Comes to America , to name a few. While these works do not downplay the pernicious ideologies of the far right nor their presence in American life, they do not sensationalize or dehistoricize them nor assign them more influence than they deserve. Lipstadt, who has devoted much of her career to combating the radical right's penchant for Holocaust denial, dedicated an entire chapter of  Beyond Belief  to challenging American anxieties about a Nazi "fifth column"—the very fears that Maddow is trying to resurrect. While Nazi Germany did have spies and propagandists in the U.S., Lipstadt cautioned that "they never constituted a network with the scope and power the press attributed them."

In  Insidious Foes , MacDonnell argues that while odious and illiberal, right-wing extremists "never posed any real danger to the republic"; instead, a media echo chamber constructed the perception of a vast and powerful far right. He also makes a good case that Germany's propaganda effort was "spectacularly unsuccessful" and ultimately did more damage to the noninterventionist cause than it aided it. Ribuffo 's classic  The Old Christian Right  (a work that Maddow mentions in her author's note but does not cite) similarly argued that the fear of these groups was a " brown scare " that often "exaggerated both [the far right's] power and its Axis connections."

How does Maddow square her findings with those of these earlier works? We do not know, because she does not tell us.

In closing the book, Maddow invites the reader to take inspiration from the work of Americans who sought to stop homegrown fascists by "any means at hand," assessing their legacies as worth remembering and emulating. Yet Maddow omits the pernicious legacy that followed from using "any means at hand" and violating the very norms her heroes sought to protect. They created the destructive and restrictive myth of isolationism , which held that it was an absence of American power from the world's stage that directly led to the rise of fascism abroad. They actively colluded with a foreign power—Great Britain—to interfere in American elections and manipulate American media . And they helped stoke the panic that led to Japanese internment and spurred the growth of the domestic security state. The latter, ironically, soon boomeranged against the left .

Those legacies are also worth remembering if we are to preserve liberty from an ever-present threat—not from enemies within our ranks or outside our walls, but within ourselves.

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Rachel Maddow offers a chilling history lesson — and hope for today

In her new book, ‘Prequel,’ Maddow looks at a past moment of crisis that might help us understand both the threats we face today and how we can endure them

A network of trained paramilitary cells. A propaganda campaign intent on sneaking Nazi materials onto college campuses. Attempted election interference from a hostile foreign power. A network of right-wing radio personalities and talking heads, often using sensationalism to spread anti-democratic messages. Sitting politicians with ties to an authoritarian groundswell. A seditious conspiracy trial.

All of this ought to sound familiar: In the last decade, each of these things has occurred in the United States. Rachel Maddow’s usual business is to report them on her evening news show, detailing each incidence of the creep of authoritarian power and each incarnation of organized violence. But in her new book, “ Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism ,” Maddow locates these now-familiar features in a more distant historical moment.

“Prequel” is a vivid, urgent, smart history of the years before and during World War II, when German agents, Nazi sympathizers, theocrats and others attempted to steer the United States away from fighting Germany — sometimes through isolationism, sometimes hoping the United States might align with Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Maddow examines how organized, pro-Nazi paramilitary groups planned to wage war on the federal government through selective targeting, built pipe bombs and other IEDs, and distributed hate materials. She also delves into their eccentric personalities and their general excitement about Hitler and Nazism.

In telling these stories, Maddow makes a vital contribution to the history of armed fascism in the United States. She demonstrates that a broad-based social movement of Nazi activists was afoot in the 1940s. It wasn’t just America First here and the Silver Shirts there, but a host of interconnected people (well documented in the book) who wanted to overthrow the United States and implement a fascist government.

Maddow also documents another common feature of then and now: stunning failures of surveillance, prosecution and government response. A central event of “Prequel” is the Great Sedition Trial of 1944. It ultimately accomplished little to nothing. The public was left largely unaware of the real threat posed by a coalition of Hitler-backed Nazi propagandists, not to mention the reality that there were sitting U.S. senators using their offices (and taxpayer money) to distribute disinformation designed to turn Americans against one another. And that was all in addition to an array of paramilitary groups ready to go to war on the United States so they could install a fascist regime.

The judge, quite simply, seems to have died of the stress.

Looking at this story in aggregate is a shock to our usual thinking about this historical period. It’s an era that, as Maddow notes, is ordinarily remembered as a time when Americans unified against fascist threats. The trial was such a failure that most of us don’t know that the politics of the era were far more divisive than Greatest Generation mythologies would have us believe.

It’s hard to point to exactly where the Great Sedition Trial failed, but the details Maddow presents are galling. What should shock us most? The defendants putting together propaganda envelopes right there in the courtroom? Government reprisals against the lead prosecutor? The president who buried the incendiary investigation that proved — for, what, the third time? — that the defendants’ effort was designed and bankrolled by the Hitler regime?

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In “Prequel,” as in its preceding podcast, “Ultra,” Maddow sticks to history. She doesn’t draw out the connections to the present moment but rather lets the through lines emerge organically. Many of those parallels will be obvious to those who’ve studied recent developments in white-power movements and similar groups. But in my view, Maddow’s decision to not overexplain those connections reflects both a trust in the capacity of her readers and a sense that knowing this history will illuminate the way that fascist and authoritarian threats appear in our society in the present day. “Prequel” is a valuable and compelling work of the history of the present, looking at the past to understand where we are — and to locate possibilities for action that we might not otherwise have seen.

It’s also not a book that leaves us with the failures that it documents so well. Maddow makes clear that the crisis we face today is not new and that this realization should give us hope — because previous generations have faced this threat and overcome it. To this, I’ll add a hopeful note: It’s not just that we’ve weathered these threats before but also that a lot has happened since we did the last time. Between then and now, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the LGBT movement and others have profoundly transformed the way Americans think about equality. The climate crisis has ignited political action, particularly among young people.

So, as we face reactionary politics, polarization and fascist conspiracies (prosecuted as such after Jan. 6 , 2021), we have more than the example of the prior generations: We also have years and years of teaching and learning and organizing. We don’t reset back to zero with every sedition trial, even those that have failed.

As Maddow notes, it’s not just about the failed court prosecutions and the others who chose not to act. It’s about the secretary who reported her boss, the civilian investigators, the whistleblowers, the undercover journalists. It’s about people like O. John Rogge, the lead prosecutor who refused to be silenced, and at great personal risk attempted to reveal the full extent of Nazi infiltration and sympathy. Silenced by the Truman administration and others who didn’t want some two dozen sitting members of Congress exposed, Rogge nevertheless worked until he could publish a report. It took decades, and by then, in 1961, the American people weren’t so worried about the Nazi threat. Yet there the threat sat, subsurface, waiting to reemerge in ways that would continue to menace American democracy in Oklahoma City, Charlottesville and the nation’s Capitol.

Maddow’s point, in “Prequel,” is that it takes an awful lot of people to stop a fascist threat. And now, as we face another groundswell, “Prequel ” is an urgent story about how many of us will have to act if any of us hope to stop this one.

Kathleen Belew is the author of “ Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America ” and an associate professor of history at Northwestern University.

An American Fight Against Fascism

By Rachel Maddow

Crown. 382 pp. $32.

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August 1, 2023 By Katy Hershberger

Forthcoming: Rachel Maddow’s PREQUEL