Prequel

Genre

History, Society & Current Affairs

Publisher

Crown (Penguin Random House)

Publication year

2023

ISBN

9780593444511

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism is a work of history by the broadcaster Rachel Maddow, published by Crown in October 2023. Drawing on her podcast Ultra, it recounts the American pro-fascist movement of the 1930s and '40s and efforts to counter it. It was a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Long before January 6, the United States faced a homegrown fascist movement - and, Rachel Maddow argues, only narrowly defeated it. Prequel resurrects the American ultranationalists, isolationists and Nazi sympathizers of the 1930s and '40s, some of them sitting members of Congress, and the journalists, prosecutors and citizens who fought to expose them. Drawn from the reporting behind her podcast Ultra, the book is briskly told and studded with characters too strange for fiction, but its purpose is serious: to show that American democracy has survived internal assault before, and at real cost. intendle recommends it as history with obvious present-day resonance, delivered with Maddow's storyteller's energy. A #1 New York Times bestseller, it hands readers a usable past - a reminder that the fight against authoritarianism at home is not unprecedented. Alarming and oddly heartening at once, it argues that vigilance, not complacency, is the American tradition worth reviving.