In "Look Homeward, America," Bill Kauffman introduces us to the reactionary radicals, front-porch anarchists, and traditionalist rebels who give American culture and politics its pith, vim, and life. Blending history, memoir, digressive literariness, and polemic, Kauffman provides fresh portaiture of such American originals as Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, regionalist painter Grant Wood, farmer-writer Wendell Berry, publisher Henry Regnery, maverick U.S. senators Eugene McCarthy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and other Americans who can't--or shouldn't--be filed away in the usual boxes labeled "liberal" and "conservative." Ranging from Millard Fillmore to "Easy Rider," from Robert Frost to Mother Jones, Kauffman limns an alternative America that draws its breath from local cultures, traditional liberties, small-scale institutions, and neighborliness. There is an America left that is worth saving: these are its paragons, its poets, its pantheon.

Declaring himself the "love child of Henry Thoreau and Dorothy Day," Kaufmann articulates his political views, an anarchism or reactionary radicalism rooted in "love of family, community, local self-rule, and a respect for permanent truths." These essays combine memoir, political polemic, and reflection on American figures, among them Eugene McCarthy, Patrick Moynihan, Grant Wood, Wendell Berry, Carolyn Chute, Sanford Church, and Seth M. Gates.
Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Declaring himself the "love child of Henry Thoreau and Dorothy Day," Kaufmann articulates his political views, an anarchism or reactionary radicalism rooted in "love of family, community, local self-rule, and a respect for permanent truths." These essays combine memoir, political polemic, and reflection on American figures, among them Eugene McCarthy, Patrick Moynihan, Grant Wood, Wendell Berry, Carolyn Chute, Sanford Church, and Seth M. Gates. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)