Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right

Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. By Lisa McGirr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. xiv, 395 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-691-05903-9.) Lisa McGirr's Suburban Warriors is an excellent example of the value of combining political with community history. Examining the evolution of conservatism in the post-World War II years, McGirr uses Orange County, California, as the focus for her study. In the process, she addresses several important and frequently overlooked questions: who were the people-not the leaders-behind this grass-roots movement? Why did they get involved? What did they do? Perhaps most important, she asks how a movement with such intimate ties to the past could flourish in an area so dependent upon modern technology for its economic base and cultural identity. McGirr succeeds in addressing the latter question more thoroughly...