The Gilded Rage

2016 continues to be the most surreal and unpredictable election year in recent memory and this is due in large part to one Donald J. Trump and the millions of Americans who made him this year's Republican nominee for president. As Trump continues to succeed despite behavior that would cripple any other politician, whether it is questioning the patriotism of the Gold Star Khan family or banishing a baby from one of his press conferences, it is imperative to understand why so many continue to support him. And this is what makes The Gilded Rage so important; it provides insight into the forgotten Americans that continue to befuddle pundits and "experts" on CNN and FOX alike.

This grippingly intimate and heart-breaking book provides a portrait of the walking wounded who make up the base of the Trump movement. Desperate and angry, these are the Americans of the vanishing industrial heartland, depressed Appalachian coal country, and the no-man's land along the Southwestern border. These are coal miners, out of work construction workers, and small business owners, who have watched their fortunes dwindle with each passing year. They have no illusions about the grandstanding billionaire and his glaring flaws. But these men and women feel forgotten and screwed over by political, corporate and media elites...and they feel that Donald Trump, despite his flamboyant demagoguery, might well be their last chance for salvation. Reminiscent of Studs Terkel's Working, with a dash of Hunter S. Thompson, Alexander Zaitchik in this important book takes us deeper into the ravaged soul of America than any other chronicler of our times.

Selected as one of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten picks for Politics & Current Events of Fall 2016

Praise for Alexander Zaitchik's Common Sense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance:

“A sharp and informative smackdown. For Zaitchik, [Glenn] Beck is just one more American con artist in the P.T. Barnum tradition, a shameless pseudoconservative bottom-feeder who will say anything to keep the spotlight on himself while the money rolls in.”
—Mark Lilla, The New York Review of Books

“A sensational book… This is a beautifully written and insightful biography—thoughtful, considered, and very intentional about the need to understand Beck both as a symbol of something larger going on in America and as a person.”
—Susan Gardner, Daily Kos

“A scathing profile that follows the powerful pundit from a single-parent home in rural Washington state to conservative superstardom.”
—The Boston Globe

“A great political book. Zaitchik tells [Beck’s story] well and nobody has told it more soberly.”
—Slate

“An informative study.”
—Sean Wilentz, The New Yorker

“A gripping and thoroughly researched biography.”
—Joe Conason, Salon

Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance journalist and the author of Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance. His writing has appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Guardian, and many others. He lives in New Orleans.

"The Gilded Rage offers a sharp corrective to the panicked schematic analysis of Trumpism as another GOP-choreographed hoodwinking of disgruntled grassroots conservatives. By focusing on the Trump phenomenon as a social movement, Zaitchik astutely shows us how Trump’s mass appeal ... arises out of the same populist discontent that the GOP leadership has stoked throughout the Obama era, without even pretending to assuage it. To his great credit, he listens while his subjects offer up complicated, often self-questioning accounts of their idiosyncratic paths to ardent Trump support. There’s nothing here that resembles the glib demographic explanations-cum-dismissals of Trumpism that are now fashionable among liberals in the Northeast corridor... The overall effect of Zaitchik’s unrushed, painstaking interviews is to show a Trump electorate whose members—much like the rest of us—are deeply anxious about their precarious standing in a political and economic order that hasn’t given them any grounds for hope."—Chris Lehmann, The Nation

"[Zaitchik] believes that the stereotypical Trump supporter often portrayed by the media is not an accurate representation of all”—Salon

"Throughout the election, Trump supporters were represented as a fringe, alt-right group. But the people who make up Trump America are more than a monolith. Alexander Zaitchik explores the lives of these people through his book, The Gilded Rage: A Wild Ride Through Donald Trump's America. He examines the Trump phenomenon as a social movement born of discontent.”—NPR /The Takeway