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Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party. Edited by Lawrence Rosenthal and Christine Trost. University of California Press. 312pp, Pounds 48.95 and Pounds 19.95. ISBN 9780520274228 and 4235. Published 24 August 2012
Since the 2008 election of Democrat Barack Obama, the US' first black president, a movement known as the Tea Party has emerged within the Republican Party. Here, Lawrence Rosenthal and Christine Trost of the Center for Right-Wing Studies at the University of California, Berkeley present 24 articles - by scholars as well as three well-chosen non- academic experts on the US Right - that analyse it as a social movement.
In popular US folklore, the word "tea" recalls the revolutionary zeal of a 1773 uprising against a British tax, when Americans threw British tea into Boston's harbour. But in fact the "tea" in the Tea Party's name is an acronym for Taxed Enough Already. Part populist uprising, part corporate shill and all far-right-wing, the movement swept 66 new Republicans into Congress in 2010, assuring Republican control of the House of Representatives.
It is a complex movement, whose ultimate significance is not yet clear. Steep examines its ideological profile and...