A fascinating survey of the history of political and economic ideas in the US that have led to an increasingly entrenched ultra-rich class of oligarchs

Luke Winslow is an associate professor of rhetorical studies in the Department of Communication at Baylor University. He is author of American Catastrophe: Fundamentalism, Climate Change, Gun Rights, and the Rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, Economic Injustice and the Rhetoric of the American Dream, and coauthor of Children as Rhetorical Advocates in Social Movements.

“Oligarchy in America explains how arguments as diverse as Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinism and Tucker Carlson’s anti-elitism, suture the interests of the ultra-rich to state politics and disenfranchises the ordinary electorate, upending the arithmetic of democracy. It is a must read for those interested in rhetoric and the increasingly fraught politics of democracy.” —Catherine Chaput is author of Market Affect and the Rhetoric of Political Economic Debates