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Furious Minds
- Author
- Laura K. Field
- Narrator
- Laura K. Field
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Publish Date
- 4 November 2025
- Run Time
- 13 hours 1 minute
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
This audiobook narrated by Laura Field tells the story of the radical conservative intellectual movement shaping Donald Trump's agenda—and how it threatens American freedoms, values, and democracy
Donald Trump is not a big thinker, but his 2016 presidential victory presented a grand opportunity for people who are, and it set off a radicalization and reconfiguration of the American conservative intellectual world. In
Furious Minds, Laura Field, who spent close to a decade in conservative academic circles, chronicles the rise of the New Right—the network of academics, public intellectuals, and influencers who provide ideological fuel to Trumpism. This movement includes figures such as Patrick Deneen, Christopher Rufo, Peter Thiel, and JD Vance. Their agenda is built to last, and it has dire long-term implications for liberal democracy.
The New Right has precedents in American history, but it is distinct for its youthfulness, misogyny, and extraordinary successes—most notably the elevation of Vance to the vice presidency. The movement—which draws together associates of the right-wing Claremont Institute, National Conservatives, Postliberals, and the Hard Right—advocates nationalist economics, tight borders, isolationism, and reactionary social values. It helped to strategize January 6th and created Project 2025. But above all, the New Right is engaged in a vast culture war against modern liberal pluralism. It is determined to harness state power and use it in new, illiberal ways, from college campuses to the international scene—all driven by the fantasy of restoring a pure America.
Incisive and urgent,
Furious Minds tells the story of the thinkers of the New Right—and their powerful assault on American freedoms, values, and ideals.
Critics Review
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"What should we make of the intellectual aspect of MAGA? Beginning in 2016, Laura K. Field writes, in Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, a group of 'PhDs and intellectuals'—'almost all men'—began coalescing around ideas that they attributed to, associated with, or smuggled inside Trump's nascent movement. . . . [Field] was once a conservative, and has a lot of sympathy for various conservative viewpoints. . . . [But] unnerved by what she perceived as a newly supercharged misogyny among conservative intellectuals—in her view, they are 'obsessed with masculinity' in a way their predecessors were not—Field watched as they grew suddenly more radical."—Joshua Rothman, New Yorker
New Yorker
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"Furious Minds is the most up-to-date introduction we have to the MAGA intellectual right reshaping America with astonishing speed today."—Mark Lilla, New York Review of Books
New York Review of Books
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"A great new book about the intellectual roots of MAGA."—Greg Sargent, New Republic
New Republic
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"A meticulous and unsettling revelation of a right-wing plan for a 'new old-fashioned world.'"—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Publishers Weekly
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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"Fascinating. . . . This is a very troubling moment for American democracy, such as it is, and the path forward is unclear to many of us. Furious Minds may help by showing readers, in stark detail, the obscure path that led us to where we are. It's a work of intellectual history, not a polemic, but it offers an important warning to those with ears to hear: the anger and resentment driving our current agonies can end in only one place."—Matt McManus, Commonweal
Commonweal
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"A Financial Times Best Book of the Year"
Financial Times
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"One of Project Syndicate Commentators' Best Reads of the Year"
Project Syndicate
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"[An] excellent new book."—Michelle Goldberg, New York Times
New York Times
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"Fascinating and important. . . . Field is an excellent and intellectually honest guide. . . . Furious Minds includes some surprisingly witty and playful moments, which stand in stark contrast to the turgid moralizing and hostility she examines in the book."—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times
New York Times
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"In the ever-growing field of books aiming to explain the rise of the MAGA movement, Furious Minds, by a political theorist with longstanding experience in conservative academia, stands out for its emphasis on ideas. Field shows how the New Right, drawing on a loose network of academics and influencers, has coalesced around a vision of America that is socially reactionary, economically isolationist and deeply skeptical of pluralism as an inherent social good."—New York Times
New York Times
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"A fascinating taxonomy of the wild world of far-right thinking."—Zack Beauchamp, Vox's The Gray Area
The Gray Area, Vox
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"[Laura K. Field's] background perfectly positions her to deliver this lively, devastating taxonomy and critique of MAGA's ideologues. She was originally trained in Straussian scholarship—a reading of classical political thought that criticizes the modern turn away from the sources of moral authority toward liberalism and, in Strauss's view, nihilism. His approach has had a deep influence on leading conservative American intellectuals of the past half century. . . . Nearly a decade in these academic circles makes Field a knowledgeable guide to a subject she takes seriously. She's also a Canadian woman, a double identity that puts her at a skeptical distance from the more and more extreme world of the American right."—George Packer, The Atlantic
The Atlantic
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Laura K. Field
- Narrator
- Laura K. Field
- Duration
- 13 hours 1 minute
- Release Date
- 4 November 2025
- ISBN
- 9780691283128
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Genre
- Far-right political ideologies and movements, Political science and theory
Synopsis
This audiobook narrated by Laura Field tells the story of the radical conservative intellectual movement shaping Donald Trump's agenda—and how it threatens American freedoms, values, and democracy Donald Trump is not a big thinker, but his 2016 presidential victory presented a grand opportunity for people who are, and it set off a radicalization and reconfiguration of the American conservative intellectual world. In Furious Minds, Laura Field, who spent close to a decade in conservative academic circles, chronicles the rise of the New Right—the network of academics, public intellectuals, and influencers who provide ideological fuel to Trumpism. This movement includes figures such as Patrick Deneen, Christopher Rufo, Peter Thiel, and JD Vance. Their agenda is built to last, and it has dire long-term implications for liberal democracy. The New Right has precedents in American history, but it is distinct for its youthfulness, misogyny, and extraordinary successes—most notably the elevation of Vance to the vice presidency. The movement—which draws together associates of the right-wing Claremont Institute, National Conservatives, Postliberals, and the Hard Right—advocates nationalist economics, tight borders, isolationism, and reactionary social values. It helped to strategize January 6th and created Project 2025. But above all, the New Right is engaged in a vast culture war against modern liberal pluralism. It is determined to harness state power and use it in new, illiberal ways, from college campuses to the international scene—all driven by the fantasy of restoring a pure America. Incisive and urgent, Furious Minds tells the story of the thinkers of the New Right—and their powerful assault on American freedoms, values, and ideals.
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