Note: This is an encore presentation of Reader's Corner. The episode originally aired in September 2022.
Though you may not know his name, Robert Welch - founder of the John Birch Society - is easily one of the most significant architects of our current political moment. In A Conspiratorial Life, the first full-scale biography of Welch, Edward H. Miller delves deep into the life of an overlooked figure whose ideas nevertheless reshaped the American right, and planted some of modern conservatism’s most insidious seeds.
Edward H. Miller is associate teaching professor at Northeastern University. Both A Conspiratorial Life and his previous book, Nut Country: Right Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy, were published by the University of Chicago Press.
