the undertow book review

Jeff Sharlet predicts fascism in America. He’s still an optimist

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The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War

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Jeff Sharlet is an optimist ... of sorts. That’s why he included so many detailed scenes from Donald Trump’s election rallies in his new book, “ The Undertow : Scenes From a Slow Civil War.”

In a video interview from his home in Vermont, Sharlet describes his latest book as “the awful fruits” of two decades of covering religion and the far right. Written across the better part of a decade, these essays spend time with hard-core militias, armed evangelicals, men’s rights activists and even some ordinary citizens who, in 2016 at least, had some legitimate reasons for buying what Trump was selling.

But the question arises, reading his book: Do we need to relive Trump’s demonic performance art, to hear his ranty hostilities, even on the page?

“I’m sympathetic to that,” says Sharlet, whose previous book was “ The Family : The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” But he has his reasons. Sharlet imagines a reader stumbling onto his book decades from now in the kind of used bookstore he likes to frequent — where he recently found, for instance, Matthew Josephson ’s 1934 history, “The Robber Barons.”

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“I’ve got to keep this stuff in or it will disappear,” he says. Therein lies the optimism: the projection of a future when the convulsions of the present will feel alien — and when people will still be reading books.

He may be unusually hopeful for an author invoking civil war in his subtitle, but Sharlet is not deluded. “I think we’re going to go through a period of fascism,” he says. “Right-wing intellectuals have actively rejected democracy now. Trump’s emails are getting scarier, talking about, ‘This is the final battle.’ Our job is to hold on as long as we can, but we’re going forward into the desert. The terror is about how much hurt and how much pain happens.”

Even if we do succumb to a full-fledged fascist takeover, Sharlet believes it will be temporary — a mania “that burns its life force very quickly.”

The heart of his book tracks our gradual descent into the madness. But first, a musical number. The opening chapter poignantly captures the life of Harry Belafonte — his music and politics, his perseverance and resilience. It’s a fascinatingly odd choice.

“There’s a calculator somewhere that could figure out how many fewer books I’ll sell by starting with this chapter,” Sharlet says with a laugh. “People will come to the book because they’re alarmed and distressed and then they’ll say, ‘Wait a minute, first I have to read about this? If I want a book about 1950s music I’ll get it.’”

Nevertheless, Sharlet insisted the chapter belonged up front. “I don’t want people to encounter the book as a form of doomscrolling. So you start with Harry’s endurance and his hope.”

Then things fall apart. Sharlet worries that the U.S. military will fracture, “base by base,” pointing to the way National Guard commanders in some states refused to enforce vaccine mandates, as well as the actions of governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott who “want to stand in the schoolhouse door” against the federal government, like the segregationist governors of the civil rights era. “Either troops come and they’re a hero,” he says, “or troops don’t and they won.”

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“The Undertow” is generally closer to the ground — a dark travelogue of a nation of “simmering violence” in which QAnon-influenced rabbit-holers stalk perceived enemies, often without making headlines.

Of those he encountered, Sharlet found the men’s movement activists the most deplorable. “You’re always looking for complexities beyond the caricatures,” he says. “They were the only ones worse than their caricature, and their caricature is dumb. They really are a bunch of sniveling guys pissed off at their wives, ex-wives or girlfriends. You don’t like your isolation and incel status? No better way to keep that going than to join them.”

Most frightening, however, was a threat he received in an Omaha church for trying to hold unauthorized conversations. “Once it was, ‘You’re damned, but we’ll talk to you,’ because they wanted attention or thought you might convert,” he says. “Now it’s, ‘How do you know I don’t have a gun?’ I didn’t think they’d shoot me, but they were baring their teeth and they were definitely going to hit me or call the cops, who would definitely be on their side.”

Sharlet also writes in detail about Ashli Babbitt , the insurrectionist killed at the Capitol on January 6th. But his viewpoint may not be what you’d expect. “She was a domestic terrorist, but that shooting was at best questionable,” he says. “I don’t like it when cops kill people.”

Babbitt was a victim of the rabbit hole, he says — and her husband, Aaron, was an apolitical “lunkhead” before grief fueled his evolution into “a very sad character” co-opted by the extreme right wing. Ultimately, Sharlet sees it as a tragedy that’s been flattened in the public discourse. “I find it grotesque both when she’s trending online among right-wingers as a martyr and when people who think of themselves as liberals are celebrating her death.”

He wants readers to feel empathy for the Babbitts and those he met along the way. Some of them might be “worst of the worst,” but ultimately we need to understand the right and its vulnerabilities. “We should have empathy for the devil, not sympathy.”

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In any event, Sharlet’s goal isn’t to persuade people like Babbitt. “I’m not into converting people,” he says. To counter the rise in white supremacist propaganda, we need a different path. We might look back to Harry. “Belafonte is not trying to talk people back, he’s trying to make something beautiful that people will want to be a part of. We must build a vibrant democratic culture and take seriously the critiques of it.”

He knows some on the left will disagree with his perspective but argues that those fighting for democracy must stop squabbling over methods. In prewar Germany, he notes, liberals were bashing each other as fascism took root.

“This is all-hands-on-deck time,” he says. “We don’t know what’s going to work. You want to make jokes or write a long political science essay or do earnest union organizing or create beautiful art and poetry — it’s all good.”

Sharlet never saw himself becoming a veteran of the extremism beat. Years ago, he had declared himself done with covering white extremism — “it’s so poisonous” — but now he calls up the famous Michael Corleone line about being pulled back in by Trump’s ascension.

“I had to write to try and make sense of this,” he says. “I have some agency and I can tell these stories. I have kids that I’m scared for. This book isn’t going to help, but it lets me imagine that I’m doing something. To me it’s much scarier to be looking away. No blue pill for me.”

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How to Tell Stories About Fascism Now

According to author and journalist Jeff Sharlet, "the old ways aren't going to work."

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links. Here’s how we test products and why you should trust us.

Jeff Sharlet has made a career out of writing about “bad people.” In a way, writing about horrible people gives him some control. They influence our lives, whether we like it or not, and by seeking them out, Sharlet can see them for who they are, grounding the harsh truth that this is our world and these people aren’t that different from us. Someday the mirror could be held up, and that could be you on the other side of the divide.

In Sharlet’s new collection of essays The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War , the journalist spends his time trying to understand Donald Trump and his devoted followers (“ Heavy with Gold ”; ‘The Trumpocene”), the men’s rights movement (“ Whole Bottle of Red Pills ”), the vapid emptiness of modern Christianity’s reality television pastor (“ Ministry of Fun ”), as well as the current of QAnon deaths and murders that we've been ignoring (“Tick-Tock”). Sharlet also writes about the oncoming civil war that started long ago, overlooked and now growing in strength ever since the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Sharlet argues that a large segment of society has become disillusioned and lost to conspiracy; they now have a martyr for their cause in Ashli Babbit (“ The Undertow ”), an insurrectionist shot and killed while storming the Capitol. The essays don’t dive into the pool of sharks, but instead slowly settle in, as the sharks surround Sharlet while he tries to find out how they all ended up in the same pool.

But there is hope in The Undertow . Sharlet bookends the book with stories about Harry Belafonte , the famed singer and actor who was also an activist. Sharlet thought Belafonte was a worthy subject as he tried to veer away from “bad people” after spending years uncovering the dark truths lingering behind closed doors. The book then ends with a story about the short-lived 1950s folk group the Weavers and its booming big man Lee Hays .

I met Sharlet one evening in New Hampshire, where he teaches at Dartmouth College. Snow fell and the streets filled with the brown mush from the wintry mix. We wandered in search of a place for a drink and eventually found a nearly empty sports bar in the midst of preparation for a sorority party. As the snow fell, we talked about what Sharlet calls a “civil war” that’s already underway.

Sharlet is an energetic man. Under the layers of jacket and hat, he comes across as warm, not some staunch academic or prideful journalist. He somehow scrapes into both worlds as a literary anthropologist looking at society and its ills, pondering what it means and how we got here. It’s that curiosity and energy that comes across in his writing, both smart and easy to read while also packed with context and information.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ESQUIRE: I found it interesting that you write "we" throughout the book whenever you are in the crowd. You don't look at this segment of America from a distance; instead, you write from within this group.

JEFF SHARLET: We're not far apart from it. The thing that interested me on and off is monstrosity. I've written about some bad people. Folks want to see them as monsters, and I'm fascinated by the whole concept of monsters that we've lost. I’m going to do that fake erudition thing: I was reading about werewolves in the Middle Ages and thinking about how what makes a monster monstrous is that they're part human and part us. Godzilla is an entertaining character, but he’s not the monster a vampire or a werewolf is—the kind of profane combination. And, yet, when we say these people are monsters, Trumpers, or whatever, we imagine that we're not connected and that we're not complicit. If these folks are monsters, they're human; I'm human. They can do this; I could do that. That should be obvious to us from the lessons of history and it's not.

It has always been about “we” throughout my whole writing life, because I am part of it. The whole point is not to figure out how those people are different than me. The point is to figure out: we are on the spectrum, and if they can do this poison, I can too, and I am complicit.

There’s something about allowing someone off without the tough questions, where you're not allowing them off, but you're not judging them on the page. You're not making them any less than us.

It's a chemical reaction and I'm not immune to it.

I had resolved to not write about monsters anymore because I was spending a lot of time on them. I first got this job at Dartmouth in 2010. I'm doing my job and within the first few weeks, somebody came around from this organization to interview my colleagues, which actually worked out great. They were all titillated. Then I got a letter threatening a lawsuit. I took it to a friend, a First Amendment lawyer, who said, ‘They’ve got nothing. They're going to bleed you; that's the plan. They know they have bottomless pockets and you don't.” I was like, fuck, I can't do this anymore. I have a young kid. So I resolved not to do it. The Harry Belafonte story came to me at that time. I'm like, I'm going to write about good people. Then Eric [Sullivan, at GQ then and now an editor at Esquire ], who I didn't know, called up and said, “Do you still write magazine stories?” I felt so bad. Yes, I just haven't in a while . He said, “What do you want to do?” And I said, send me some place with bad people, because that is what I want to do . I felt comfortable with it. There’s something about it. If you can get close to these scary people, it's counterphobic. If someone is scary, pull it close.

Why do people let you in? There are references to the cages reporters were penned in, and you had to put on a MAGA hat because of the rain. Why did they talk to you and other reporters?

I've never had a press pass in my life. I don't know why you would want one. Why would I want to go and get the story everyone else is getting? Trump was the first thing I was writing about that other people were writing about. I don't like to write about things other people are writing about—not because I’m so original. It just makes me anxious. I'm not interested in the scoop. It's great, and I love reading it, but it's not for me.

If I want to understand what’s going on at those rallies, that means I need to get my ticket. I need to wait in line for six hours, or whatever it takes and stand around on the concrete. I need to be jostled around. This is the experience. You would see these preachers at these Trump rallies—the hardest right fundamentalists I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot. I've been to a lot of churches, and this was goddamn . You look at the press and they're like, “This is not the main event.” They're checking their phones. I'm like, that's fascism right there.

I've never had a press pass in my life. I don't know why you would want one.

You write about faith a lot. Everyone here has faith, and you also have faith in writing and in humanity, which is interesting to read in a book that’s dark in a lot of places. But even when you write about people threatening you, you hope for the best.

This is what I mean. This is the solace.

There’s a guy in this book, Rob Brumm—he comes in the Wisconsin section . He is a militia commander. I was driving around in Wisconsin because my kid is in a program there—that's why I was in Wisconsin—and I was taking pictures of flags. I stopped to take a picture of his “Fuck Trudeau” flag, which is weird in Wisconsin. I ended up spending maybe about three hours talking to that guy and more time with his family. He's a fascist, but he was desperate to talk. He is surrounded by manly men, but he's not quite a manly man, because he loves to talk and think about history and so on. You find these connections, these people; they want to talk as much as you do. I think of it as you're leaning on each other.

There is a woman in the Trump stories: Diane G, Gnostic Diane. I was wandering around with the crowd, experiencing what the crowd was experiencing. I wanted to do that because I wanted to understand why you think this is funny. The reason they think it's funny is because it's funny. That’s a whole other thing about Trump: his timing, it's amazing. When he is on, he is one of the great orators of our time. I've seen Obama and I've seen Trump, and those are the two best of our time. He’s not always on and the language doesn't make sense, but that doesn't matter, because a good orator doesn't need that.

Then you find these individuals, and for whatever reason, Diane and I kept talking in the parking lot afterwards. The great advantage of having a heart attack is that they're like, oh I have heart issues too . Sitting there in a parking lot, we talked. Everybody left. It’s that strange intimacy. If you want to tell stories about fascism, the old ways aren't going to work. I know this because they haven't. It doesn't mean that we have to do this bullshit thing, like, what unites us? Me and Rob Brumm, we're not united. We're on different sides; let us talk honestly, now that we know that. None of these people think I am with them. I don't lie and I argue.

If you want to tell stories about fascism, the old ways aren't going to work.

There has been a change, though.

The Undertow is the change. I could go anywhere partly because I am a straight white guy and being bald helps—it somehow makes me whiter and straighter and middle-aged non-assuming. It used to be that I could talk to anyone. You used to be able to talk to any fascist and they'd always want to talk to you, because they wanted to share their story and because they really believed they could convert you. I’ve been to so many churches, temples, and compounds, and for years people thought they could convert me. This is the first time, [while writing] The Undertow , I couldn’t.

The first militia church welcomed me. The second militia church in Omaha—they didn't draw a gun, but I thought, if I stay here for a moment longer I am in trouble, and this is going to be bad, and they do not care. They were not interested in converting me. They were not interested in using me. Fuck platforming. They didn’t care. The lines were absolutely drawn.

I believe it is because we are in a slow simmering civil war and headed towards a real war. I don't want this to be misread. We’re in a time when it is vulnerable and it's like, Sharlet thinks it's nice to talk to these people. It was clear that when I was in Wisconsin and I would drive around the state that a lot of these folks are lovely and they're fascists. Both are true. I use the word fascist and I don't use it glibly. In my first book The Family, I wrote a chapter called “The F Word”; the F Word was fascism. I was writing about the family's recruitment of Nazi war criminals after World War II. Until recently, I never used it like a lot of folks. I said, look there is more than one kind of bad under the sun, and this isn't fascist, and you need to build perspective. Now we have fascism. And it's not just here; it’s a global fascist moment.

The other thing about these guys is that they believe in magic, which is fascinating. Fascism is a magic system of belief. The gnosticism of Diane; Rob Brumm's whole white supremacist rant. Ashli Babbit is someone who fell into the magic, and her husband has since. Her husband could care less about this stuff before, and now he is horrific.

Will it come to violence?

Will it come to violence? What do you mean will it come to violence? We are in violence. Violence is happening all over the place, and not just in the Proud Boy and drag queen story hour brawls that you read about on Twitter. There are all these little things of people doing violence and their families doing violence. It’s already here. Will it blossom into this larger thing? That I don't know. For years, because I wrote about the Family, people said, “Sharlet is a hysteric,” and so on. I was the one saying they're not a conspiracy. It’s a social movement. I don't like it, but it’s a social movement. And now we are here. Nothing has changed and we're in such a tide of grief.

I hope the grief comes through. Fascism was growing, but we wouldn't have gotten to this point without COVID, without grief, without people denying the loss, and people accepting the loss.

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Jeff Sharlet’s “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War” is an intelligent exploration of the undercurrents of American society, a society teetering on the precipice of political, moral, and ideological tumult.

It is an invaluable contribution to understanding the contemporary sociopolitical milieu in the United States, a country haunted by internal strife and discord.

Sharlet delves into the disintegration of the United States, focusing on the rise of anti-democratic extremism. His work reveals a country caught in the whirlwind of political divisions brought about by potent figures such as Donald Trump, attempted election overturns, and the Supreme Court’s actions on Roe v Wade. Intertwined with extremism on the right-wing political spectrum, these complex factors have led to an intensification of strategies aiming to dismantle the Democratic Party and criminalize abortions. The book is an unflinching look at the face of the current state of American politics and its stark division.

The author’s use of a ‘mythic-religious’ approach to exploring this landscape offers a unique and valuable perspective, uncovering elements often missed in standard journalistic pieces. Sharlet skillfully delves into the infusion of personal faith into political action, a phenomenon particularly visible in the rise of Trump and his movement. The book examines these dynamics not merely at the echelons of power. Still, it takes a grassroots view of the populace—the physical and virtual crowds that these tumultuous political dynamics have influenced.

“The Undertow” captures the atmosphere surrounding the crowds rallying in the context of right-wing politics, showcasing the deep-rooted belief in an imminent civil war. Sharlet’s deft exploration of the intersection between religion and politics paints a vivid picture of these gatherings. His extensive coverage ranges from prosperity-focused hipster megachurches in Miami to men’s rights conferences near Detroit, exposing the motivations and beliefs that fuel these crowds.

Sharlet’s narrative compels readers to pay attention to these gatherings and their potential to stir tangible consequences, as demonstrated by the U.S. Capitol storming incident on January 6, 2021.

The narrative offered by Sharlet in “The Undertow” weaves together seemingly disparate issues, forming a comprehensive and nuanced picture of the MAGA landscape. By intertwining connections between guns and abortion, Trump, and Gnosticism, Sharlet creates a panoramic view of the American political landscape and its socio-cultural implications. The narrative is not confined to contemporary issues. Still, it includes references to historical figures and movements, such as Harry Belafonte and the Occupy movement, creating a richer understanding of the context of the current political climate.

What’s particularly striking is Sharlet’s ability to traverse the contours of a disintegrating society without losing the narrative thread. He maintains a steady, insightful gaze upon the mundane, the extraordinary, and everything in between. However, it should be noted that “The Undertow” lacks a comprehensive view of the economic landscape that significantly influences these socio-political issues. Despite this gap, the book provides a much-needed exploration of the convoluted intertwining of political extremism, faith, and societal divisions.

“The Undertow” is a searing exploration of the fissures in American society and the forces that amplify them. It casts a harrowing, often heartbreaking, and at times darkly humorous light on the precarious state of democracy in the era of Trump.

The reader is taken on a journalistic journey, examining evangelical churches, the men’s rights movement, the January 6 crowd, and the rural west’s ideological landscape, revealing the depths of America’s political and personal reactions. Its riveting narrative and immersive reportage take readers into uncomfortable territories while maintaining a balance between heartbreak and quiet hope. It’s a mood-altering, mind-altering, and essential read for those seeking to understand the country’s current state.

Research Scholar and Academic; Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Pisa, Italy. Dr. Usman has participated in various national and international conferences and published 30 research articles in international journals.

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THE UNDERTOW

Scenes from a slow civil war.

by Jeff Sharlet ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 2023

A frightening, wholly believable vision of an American cataclysm to come—possibly soon.

Nightmarish dispatches from the camps of the “Trumpocene.”

At the epicenter of Sharlet’s account is Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was killed while attempting to breach the Capitol during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. She was, writes the author, “a fool who pursued her own death,” but then adds, “And yet, the rest of us might say the same of ourselves.” That’s a debatable proposition, but what isn’t debatable is how Babbitt, wholly committed to Trumpism, has been converted into a martyr, a symbol of MAGA vexillology: “Ashli Babbitt was processed, made productive, almost immediately after her death, transformed right away into yet another flag, like a new tarot card in the deck of fascism.” If Sharlet tries to give her a touch of a pass—she was someone’s daughter, once a little girl who loved horses—it comes back to doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Babbitt is the subject of constant debate and remembrance among the people Sharlet encountered as he traveled around the country, a journey that led him to lay out a sharp, distressing portrait of a chaotic future: MAGA America is pumped up for, even eagerly anticipating, civil war, egged on by self-serving fundamentalist preachers, undergirded by antisemitism and QAnon dogma, and manipulated by Trump, who “fused his penchant for self-pity with the paranoia that runs like a third rail through Christian conservatism, the thrilling promise of ‘spiritual war’ with dark and hidden powers.” It seems perhaps an odd digression for Sharlet to begin his account with a meditation on the subversive hidden meaning of the Harry Belafonte song “Day O!” but in the end, it all makes sense—far more so than the MAGA devotee who cursed Democrats for, as he confusedly asserts, “outlawing abortion.”

Pub Date: March 21, 2023

ISBN: 9781324006497

Page Count: 302

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023

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A PROMISED LAND

by Barack Obama ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020

A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.

In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.

In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.

Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9

Page Count: 768

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the undertow.

• About the Book

This is the story of the Hastings family --- their secrets, their loves and losses, dreams and heartbreaks --- captured in a seamless series of individual moments that span the years between the First World War and the present. The novel opens in 1914 as William, a young factory worker, spends one last evening at home before his departure for the navy...His son, Billy, grows into a champion cyclist and will ride into the D-Day landings on a military bicycle...His son in turn, Will, struggles with a debilitating handicap to become an Oxford professor in the 1960s... And finally, young Billie Hastings makes a life for herself as an artist in contemporary London. Just as the names echo down through the family, so too does the legacy of choices made, chances lost, and truths long buried.

The Undertow by Jo Baker

• Publication Date: May 15, 2012
• Genres: Family , Fiction
• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Knopf
• ISBN-10: 0307957098
• ISBN-13: 9780307957092

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• The Undertow

ebook ∣ Scenes from a Slow Civil War

By jeff sharlet.

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9781324074519

Jeff Sharlet

W. W. Norton & Company

21 March 2023

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An Instant New York Times Bestseller. A National Book Critics Circle Finalist for Nonfiction One of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2023 One of The New Republic's Best Books of 2023 "A riveting, vividly detailed collage of political and moral derangement in America." —Joseph O'Neill, New York Times Book Review One of America's finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart.

An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.

Across the country, men "of God" glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war—a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened—love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.

Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.

Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility.

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By Louisa Thomas

• June 8, 2012

When it was published in Britain last year, Jo Baker’s fourth novel was called “The Picture Book.” The title made some sense — it referred to both a cherished postcard album and, presumably, the snapshot structure of the narrative — but Baker’s American publishers were wise to change it. “The Picture Book” suggests something sweet and nostalgic. In its best moments, this novel, Baker’s first to be published in the United States, is gripping and ruthless.

“The Undertow” chronicles four generations of a British family, spanning 1914 to the present day. The plot makes some demands on the reader’s patience. William Hastings, a factory worker who joins the navy at the start of World War I, is torn between his commitment to his pregnant wife, Amelia, and the exotic world (and women) his ship passes as it steams toward Gallipoli. Amelia has desires that are more conservative and circumscribed, though no more easily gained. She wants her husband home, more money for food, a house with thicker walls. She wants to provide for her son, Billy, a talented cyclist, who is protective and too proud. She disapproves of his wife, Ruby, who is gorgeous, restless and Jewish. Billy and Ruby have a son, Will, who has Perthes disease. As a child, he knows his father looks at the calipers caging his limp leg and sees him as “a broken toy” that can’t be fixed. The problem with Will’s psyche becomes worse than that with his leg, and he self-medicates in time-old ways. So he passes on some of the pain to his daughter, Billie. Once, when she is a small child, he looks at her blithely standing in her bath and pities her, burdened with so much family history. “Little Billie Hastings, with her belly like a boiled egg and her narrow little shoulders. Too much for her to carry.”

The names are a lot for a reader to bear, too, if only for their number. Moving between so many perspectives can be dizzying. And the book’s structure makes the challenge even greater: short chapters that cover only a snatch of time, occasionally with gaps of years between them. Yet Baker manages to make it work. The main characters are fully realized, with each personality becoming a force field and the language warping around them.

Baker is skilled at evoking not only the distinctive social circumstances of the settings but the essential nature of each character. This, for instance, is how sensual and sexual Ruby experiences a rain shower: “Then the branches buck and toss. The leaves are dragged back, showing pale undersides. For a moment Ruby can’t work out what’s going on, then there’s a clatter like a handful of gravel, and Oh, a woman exclaims, and the first drops hit Ruby’s powdered skin, and then it’s hammering down. . . . The rain crashes down through the leaves; already they hang limp and defeated from their scarlet stems. Drops thump right through her clothes to touch her skin like fingertips.” A storm hits her husband differently. Onboard ship at the Portsmouth docks, waiting to cross to Normandy — it is June 3, 1944 — he can hear the rain thrashing and drumming the tarp he’s using as a makeshift tent. “There’s a steady drip somewhere nearby that’s driving him quietly mad.”

This kind of thick description can slow a scene or make it more lurid than life. An insignificant greeting continues for lines: “Billy takes his hand. Hooley squeezes it, jolts it down hard, then lifts it up again. Billy gets an impression of strength and solidness and damp.” (Did I mention the book covers more than 90 years?) But sometimes lurid is what you want. Baker doesn’t flinch when portraying birthing contractions, sniper wounds, rapacious whores: “They sit at the counter, in satin wraps, their legs showing right up to the calf, the bulge of flesh like a soft unfamiliar fruit.”

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• Politics & Social Sciences
• Politics & Government
• Ideologies & Doctrines
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Enjoy a free trial on us P.when("A", "a-expander", "ready").execute(function(A, expander) { A.on("a:accordion:buybox-accordion:select", function(data) { // Change active accordion pricing to APEX pricing A.$("#buyBoxAccordion").find(".accordion-header div#adbl_bb_price") .removeClass("adbl_bb_price_show").addClass("adbl_bb_price_hide"); A.$(data.selectedRow.$row).find(".accordion-header div#adbl_bb_price") .removeClass("adbl_bb_price_hide").addClass("adbl_bb_price_show"); //initialize accordion expander expander.initializeExpanders(); }); }); /* Display price in a table block so it does not overflow, ref: https://t.corp.amazon.com/D76383263 */ #adbl_bb_price { display: table; } /* APEX Pricing for Mobile & MobileApp */ .adbl_bb_price_show .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 36px; font-weight: 300; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 300; } .adbl_bb_pay_price { font-weight: 400; } .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-whole { font-size: 38px; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-whole { font-size: 24px; } .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: table-caption; font-size: 15px !important; line-height: 26px; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: table-caption; font-size: 13px !important; line-height: 10px; } #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; top: -15px !important; } #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; } #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; top: -15px !important; } #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; } /* APEX Pricing for Desktop */ #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 300; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 21px; font-weight: 300; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_pay_price { font-weight: 400; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-whole { font-size: 28px; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-whole { font-size: 21px; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block; font-size: 13px !important; line-height: 16px; top:-10px !important; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block; font-size: 12px !important; line-height: 9px; } $0.00 $ 0 . 00

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The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

An instant New York Times best seller.

One of America’s finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart.

An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.

Across the country, men “of God” glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war—a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the far right, everything is heightened—love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our 45th president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of White womanhood.

Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.

Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

• Listening Length 11 hours and 45 minutes
• Author Jeff Sharlet
• Narrator Jeff Sharlet
• Audible release date May 2, 2023
• Language English
• Publisher Audible Studios
• ASIN B0C2D9KJ4Y
• Version Unabridged
• Program Type Audiobook
• See all details

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The UNDERTOW artist development scheme for multilingual young poets is open!

Apply now for UNDERTOW 2024! Please note the application deadline has been extended to midnight on Sunday, September 8th 2024.

The Poetry Translation Centre is looking for young poets in the UK with an interest in multilingual creativity to join our UNDERTOW programme. Now in its third year, UNDERTOW is the PTC’s artist development scheme for young poets that focuses on working with people from mixed heritage and diaspora backgrounds to unlock the creative potential of polylingualism.

This year’s UNDERTOW participants will take part in workshops and seminars to build up their creative practice and receive one-to-one mentoring with the poet and critic Kit Fan. The young poets will also be able to share their work publicly at a showcase event at the Manchester Poetry Library and develop their skills as creative facilitators and workshop leaders.

Kit Fan will be the lead tutor on the course this year, delivering workshops and providing one-on-one mentoring, both with an emphasis on deepening the participants’ critical engagement with their own work. He says: “A language, like a culture, is not an island. I’m thrilled to be part of UNDERTOW, a multi-faceted developmental programme to support polylingual poets to reflect and scrutinise their art and craft.”

The participants will also all be paired with a young multilingual poet in Singapore for peer-to-peer mentoring to help them further develop their multilingual creativity as part of our international partnership with Sing Lit Station.

The programme will be run by the PTC in Partnership with Manchester Poetry Library and SingLit Station, Singapore. The majority of the course will be delivered online over seven months, with monthly activities and peer-to-peer sessions, plus there will be meet-ups in Manchester to explore the library’s collection and get workshop facilitation training.

How to apply

To apply for UNDERTOW you will need to send us two of your recent poems, a brief CV and two short texts: one about your creative life as a poet, and the other about your interest in multilingual creativity (both max 300 words each.) You can submit in writing or via video.

Submit via Submittable here.

The deadline is midnight on Sunday, September 8th 2024 .

Who can apply

You must be between 18 and 26 years old on the 1st of September 2024

You must self-identify as belonging to a mixed heritage and diaspora background

You must have a relationship with a second language beyond English

You don’t need to be fluent in another language to apply but need to have a relationship with a language beyond English that you can explore via the course. Maybe you speak several languages, or can understand but not speak your parent’s language. You could be learning a language, or exporting the loss of a language tied to your identity. Just make this clear in your application.

Kit Fan’s third poetry collection The Ink Cloud Reader (2023) was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize. He is the author of As Slow As Possible (2018) and Paper Scissors Stone (2011). His first novel is Diamond Hill (2021). He reviews regularly for The Guardian and TLS . He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Non-Executive Board Director of the Author’s Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS). www.kitfan.net

UNDERTOW is the UK’s first creative development scheme specifically focused on multilingual creativity. English is an additional language for over 20% of primary school children in the UK. Millions of young people live polylingual lives, switching back and forth between languages and cultures. UNDERTOW was created to embrace the massive creative potential in this group and ignite a passion for poetry that runs wild between languages and fosters multilingual creativity.

Tutors and workshop leaders from the past two years include Juana Adcock , the Mexican-British poet and translator, the award-winning poet Inua Ellams , Theresa Cisneros , of the Wellcome Trust, the Turner Prize-winning Array Collective, Tolu Agbelusi , a Nigerian British, poet, playwright, and Victoria Adukwei Bulley , winner of the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize.

Manchester Poetry Library 

Manchester Poetry Library (MPL) is the North West’s first public poetry library  – open to all. Based at Manchester Metropolitan University, we host a collection of over 14,000 books and recordings profiling 20th and 21st century poets, a growing children’s collection, and a languages collection co-curated with bilingual and multilingual poets. MPL has a year-round learning programme for readers and writers, as well as free events, workshops and an exhibition programme.

Sing Lit Station

Sing Lit Station’s core mission is to serve Singapore’s literary community of writers and readers, through: creating a space for writers to grow their artistic and professional lives, inviting readers to explore our literary culture, and working with many partners to build inclusive and dynamic communities. Sing Lit Station’s flagship programmes include our workshop-for-schools programme Book A Writer, our community challenge / writing forum SingPoWriMo, and our annual Manuscript Bootcamp. Learn more about Singaporean literature through our websites

poetry.sg and prose.sg .

The Writing Squad

The Writing Squad exists to create the next generation of writers in the North of England. We are a community of artists who make new work together and support each other’s development.