Far-Right Vanguard

"[T]houghtful and engaging… Huntington offers valuable background and context for the ultraconservatism of today. Among other things, his account helps make sense of the latest surge in right-wing hate groups, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the continued popularity of Trump among Republicans."—The Washington Post

"The historian John Huntington’s Far-Right Vanguard offers the fullest portrait yet of the ultraconservative mobilization of the 20th century. Whereas many scholars of the right have focused on the self-conscious development of a conservative movement that took shape in the 1950s…Huntington pushes the story back to World War I and the 1920s. He suggests that we should see the rightward edge of American politics as itself a spectrum…[and] forces the reader to consider how different our own time may be—and the possibility that the resurgence of the right today not only builds on the legacies of the 20th century, but may be threatening and dangerous in new ways."—The Nation

"What makes Huntington’s deeply researched and well-argued book a special, perhaps even landmark, study of the American Right is the metaphorical innovation at the heart of his argument. Instead of using the customary static metaphors of fringe/middle, edge/center, or extremist/respectable to dissect the conservative movement, Huntington uses a dynamic, propulsive metaphor (i.e., 'vanguard') to show how certain reactionary figures led and others followed....The significance of Huntington’s book for future scholarship on the American Right is profound."—The Review of Politics

"Huntington has made a genuine contribution to our understanding of the relationship between conservatism as a whole and its energetic right wing. This book will enrich scholars of twentieth-century American and Texas conservatism. Veteran historians and new scholars will benefit from reading it."—Southwestern Historical Quarterly

"Historians have inherited a paradigm which holds that before American conservatism could win power, it had to purge its extremes. Works like John S. Huntington's are shattering it: he establishes that ultraconservatives were the point of the spear. This is a thorough and thoughtful revision of what it meant to be 'conservative' in twentieth-century America."—Rick Perlstein, author of Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976-1980

"It is well past time for a serious exploration of the roots of the far right, and in this deeply researched, thoughtful, and smartly argued book, John S. Huntington delivers it. The topic is, of course, extremely timely: the far right has more political power, and is receiving more journalistic attention, than at any time in recent memory, with consequences that will reverberate for decades to come. But apart from its timeliness, the subject is an essential component of the history of conservatism, one that not only needs more attention but needs to be put more explicitly in conversation with a historiography that focuses perhaps too much on 'respectable conservatism.' For these reasons, Far-Right Vanguard is essential reading."—Nicole Hemmer, author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics