American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and..

Kevin Phillips, a former Republican strategist who helped design that party’s Southern strategy, made his name with his 1969 book, “The Emerging Republican Majority,” which predicted the coming ascendancy of the GOP. In the decades since, Phillips has become a populist social critic, and his last two major books – “Wealth and Democracy” (2002) and “American Dynasty” (2004) – were furious jeremiads against the financial excesses of the 1990s and what he portrayed as the Bush family’s “blatant business cronyism,” with ties to big oil, big corporations and the military-industrial complex.

His latest book, “American Theocracy,” the concluding volume of this “trilogy of indictments,” ranges far beyond the subject suggested by its title – an examination of the religious right and its influence on the current administration – to anatomize a host of economic, political, military and social developments that Phillips sees as troubling indices of the United States’ coming decline.

International Herald Tribune