Forget the red state/blue state divide—the real fault line is between progressive metropolitan and suburban areas in every region and the conservative rural sea surrounding them, asserts this trenchant study of American politics. Drawing on demographic, polling and voting data and interviews, journalist Mann analyzes the disconnect between overwhelmingly Republican rural "homelanders," who vote their traditional values and Christian moral certitudes, and an urban "metro" culture whose cosmopolitanism, secularism and relativism they revile. An avowed moderate pushed leftward by Bush's policies, his attitude is respectful but conflicted. Mann chides liberal pundits (Thomas Frank's
What's the Matter with Kansas? is a favorite target) for caricaturing homelanders as rubes gulled by Republican culture wars rhetoric into voting against their interests. Instead he finds them thoughtful, politically savvy (aided by a Constitution that grants them disproportionate electoral clout) and adroit in commandeering government policy and largesse. But he remains frustrated in his attempts to translate across the ideological gap—"It's my nature, I guess," mutters his staunchly conservative brother when pressed on his convictions—and views rural conservatism as parasitic and doomed. Although inadequate in spots—he says little about class, for example—Mann's is a lucid, provocative contribution to the conversation over America's political future.
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""Welcome to the Homeland" is clearly meant for someone like me, a native New Yorker....(Mann) argues, persuasively to my mind, that guns and godliness and unease over gays can be genuine interests (in rural America)...Mann's advice to those who would like to see more Democratic victories is to drop their airs of "irony and superiority," and begin to show empathy for their country cousins."
—New York Times Book Review"Brian Mann turns to geography to help explain the nation's deep cultural divisions. [He] believes that the mainstream media has done rural voters ('homelanders') a disservice with parachute-in coverage of places that city dwellers ('metros') just don't understand. . . .Mann writes persuasively about the fundamental disparities of U.S. democracy, which give an edge to smaller states . . . But he is most compelling when talking about the differences between his 'metro' beliefs and those of his 'homelander' brother, a devout conservative whose worldview Mann just cannot comprehend. . . . The conversations between Mann and his brother Allen, his ambassador to the other side, do much to illuminate the differences in values between rural and urban America" —
The Los Angeles Times"Mann, a public-radio reporter, produces one of the best books to date on the putative red-blue divide by focusing on interpersonal micropolitics (much of the book consists of a running dialogue with his more conservative brother) as well as macro trends that often get left out of the debate (the fact, say, that atheists and agnostics are the fastest-growing religious groups in the country) and that complicate the dominant perception of politicized evangelical hordes rising in lockstep."
— The Atlantic Monthly"Inevitably, Mann's book will be compared to
What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. The author of that book, Thomas Frank, made a big splash two years ago . . . Frank believes rural voters who support the Republicans are often unable to discern their self-interest and often are downright bamboozled. Mann believes those same rural voters have defined their self-interest clearly and know precisely what they are doing when entering the voting booth.
The biggest difference between the two books, however, is Mann's use of his beloved brother as foil and muse and seer. The contrast between the two men is endlessly fascinating, while also providing a compelling narrative structure."
— The Kansas City Star"Forget the red state-blue state divide- the real fault line is between progressive metropolitan areas in every region and the conservative rural sea surrounding them, asserts this trenchant study of American politics. Drawing on demographic, polling and voting data and interviews, journalist Mann analyzes the disconnect between overwhelmingly Republican rural "homelanders," who vote their traditional values and Christain moral certitudes, and an urban "metro" culture whose cosmopolitan, secularism, and relativism they revile. An avowed moderate pushed leftward by Bush's policies, his attitude is respectful but conflicted. Mann chides liberal pundits (Thomas Frank's
What's the Matter with Kansas? is a favorite target) for caricaturing homelanders as rubes gulled by Republican culture-wars' rhetoric into voting against their interests. Instead, he finds them thoughtful, politically savvy (aided by a Constitution that grants them disproportionate electoral clout) and adroit in commandeering government policy and largesse. But he remains frustrated in his attempts to translate across the ideological gap - "It's my nature, I guess," mutters his staunchly conservative brother when pressed on his convictions- and views rural conservatism as parasitic and doomed. Although inadequate in spots- he says little about class, for example- Mann's is a lucid, provocative contribution to the conversation over America's political future."
—
Publishers Weekly"'Welcome to the Homeland' is written as a message, and a warning, to metro readers: Rural Americans are not the hapless rubes of TV shows and smug big-city editorials. On the contrary, America's 50 million rural, predominantly white citizens, Mr. Mann believes, are a force to be reckoned with -- the most powerful "minority" in the country. And they are a population to be understood rather than condescended to... The book is strongest when Mr. Mann is visiting small towns, talking to rural preachers about faith or to shop owners about foreign policy.... He has a reporter's eye, capturing people and places succinctly. And his accounts of his conversations have the immediacy of good newspaper writing."
— Paul Beston,
Wall Street Journal"Brian Mann has lived the rural life and the political divide that splits urban and rural places. It splits his own family. Mann shows that family harmony isn't all that's at stake in the urban-rural divide. The nation's political future depends on this political and cultural gap.
Welcome to the Homeland dives into the gap, and comes up with perspectives that just might surprise rural and urban folk who believe they already have each other pegged."
—
Howard Berkes, Rural Affairs Correspondent National Public Radio"Are you 'city' or 'country'? As Brian Mann shows us, the answer to that question reveals a lot about ourselves and the current politics of the U.S. Rural and urban America have rarely been so divided, and
Welcome to the Homeland explains the rural insurrection driving the nation's conservative politics.
— Dr. Larry J. Sabato, Director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, and author of
Divided States of America"Brian Mann has worked as hard at covering rural America as any reporter
in this country. His feel for what's going on out here in the hinterlands is deep and powerful--this book is a perfect complement to Tom Franks'
What's the Matter with Kansas, and a necessary volume on any political shelf."
— Bill McKibben, author of
Wandering Home
