Betty Friedan once snapped at Phyllis Schlafly, "I'd like to burn you at the stake." And this engaging, if flawed, biography of the doyenne of U.S. conservatism during the heated early 1970s makes it clear why: it's not just Schlafly's far-right stands on feminism and reproductive rights, but her formidable debating skills and political organizing experience. Critchlow (a professor of history at St. Louis University) draws widely on both unlimited access to his subject's private papers and a broad range of other social documents. And there's much here that is fascinating, such as a mesmerizing account of Schlafly's place in the byzantine infighting of Catholic anticommunist groups in the early 1960s. But the book wavers between being a sustained account of Schlafly's career and a comprehensive political history of the conservative and religious right—and delivers fully on neither. Further, Critchlow's detached and even tone reflects none of the political passion that gripped Schlafly's life and work. While this may be a historian's attempt at objectivity, it often makes Schlafly less compelling, even at her most politically extreme—when she said the 1960s race riots were led, in part, by "federally funded poverty workers."
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[This] new political biography . . . by Donald Critchlow, follows Schlafly from her birth to the present day--at eighty-one, she is still putting out the Report. Critchlow, a history professor at Saint Louis University, argues for the exemplarity of Schlafly's life, which, he claims, parallels the rise of American conservatism.
(
Elizabeth Kolbert The New Yorker )
In
Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, Donald T. Critchlow uses the career of the woman feminists love to hate as a lens through which to examine the neglected history of grassroots conservatism in postwar America. Critchlow combines scholarly rigor with fine prose to produce the best book ever written on this subject.
(
Bracy Bersnak The American Spectator )
Had Schlafly been a figure of the Left, this book extolling her remarkable achievements would join a bookcase of similar flattering portraits acknowledging her as one of the most influential Americans in the second half of the 20th century. But because her influence prevented a destructive feminist agenda from being enshrined in the Constitution, she has had to wait 50 years for this book--the work of a respectful academic who has delved into the archives to tell an important untold story.
(
Kate O'Beirne National Review )
In this riveting, valuable book, Donald Critchlow makes the case for a Great Woman theory of history.
(
Charlotte Allen First Things )
Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade, by Donald T. Critchlow is a biography of a conservative, activist woman leader and the history of the grassroots minions she organized, almost single-handedly transforming the image of a conservative woman from the little old lady in tennis shoes, searching for communists under her bed, to a movement of well-organized, sophisticated women volunteers who moved into party politics. She may be the only woman of the late 20th century who could be accurately called as influential as Susan B. Anthony.
(
Suzanne Fields The Washington Times )
Critchlow has provided an important and compelling new exploration of the rise of the postwar right.
(
Catherine E. Rymph Reviews in American History )
As Donald T. Critchlow explains in impressive detail . . . two decades of experience in Republican politics, including a pair of unsuccessful congressional campaigns, taught [Phyllis Schlafly] how to craft arguments that would stir a wide audience, how to focus on hot-button issues and talking points, how to choose appealing representatives to make a case, and the importance of organizing at a local level and working tirelessly to fire up the troops.
(
Frederic D. Schwarz American Heritage )
[Phyllis Schlafly] is now . . . the subject if an overdue biography, and fortunately it hasn't been written by a women's studies professor who hates her. Donald T. Critchlow . . . treats Schlafly with the respect she deserves. He enjoyed exclusive access to her personal files and provides genuine insights into her life and times.
(
Charlotte Hays DC Examiner )
Critchlow has written a fine, and long overdue, biography of this activist from Alton, Illinois. He has also chronicled the rise of the modern American conservative movement after the Goldwater debacle. His is a bottom-up history of grassroots political organizing, and the role women played in it, and a top-down tale of the woman who led it. . . . [A] truly compelling account.
(
Karlyn Bowman The Weekly Standard )
Donald Critchlow's heavily footnoted
Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade is as much a history of red-state conservatism as it is a biography of a conservative blue-staters love to hate. Particularly when viewed through the prism of gender politics, Mrs. Schlafly's accomplishment is remarkable. . . . . Mrs. Schlafly took a movement of lumpen proletariat and brought it the center of American power and institutions.
(
Jessica Gavora The New York Sun )
Donald Critchlow . . . has presented us with a comprehensive, meticulously researched and thoroughly readable biography. . . . Critchlow's book is likely to be the most comprehensive account of Schlafly's remarkable life for quite some time to come.
(
William A. Rusher Claremont Review of Books )
Donald Critchlow . . . has written a worthy biography of the woman and her times. . . . By focusing on Schlafly and the grassroots conservative world she helped build, he challenges the knee-jerk idea that conservative foundations and think tanks wholly powered the resurgence of the right.
(
Abby Scher The Public Eye )
Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism is a tour de force. By situating an important political figure in a broader social movement, Critchlow contributes greatly to our understanding of American politics in the last half of the twentieth century.
(
Jonathan J. Bean H-Net Reviews )
Critchlow . . . fairly delineates [Schlafly's] beliefs and her objections to modern liberalism. It is a worthy contribution to the history of the conservative political movement.
(
University Bookman )
So influential has the Right been in shaping the American social and political culture in the last twenty-five years that one might be tempted to see its rise to power as inevitable. But as Donald T. Critchlow argues in his political biography of Phyllis Schlafly, one of the twentieth century's most influential conservatives, the emergence of the Right to a dominant position in national politics and in the Republican Party in the 1980s was an uneven process.
(
Sylvie Murray American Historical Review )
