The Right Nation is the definitive portrait of the America that few outsiders understand: the America that votes for George Bush, that supports the death penalty and gun rights, that believes in minimal government and long prison sentences, that pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol. America, argue John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, award winning journalists at The Economist, has always been a conservative country; but over the past 50 years it has built up a radical conservative movement unlike any other country. The authors tell the story of how these radicals took over the Republican Party, and they deconstruct the Bush White House, examining the many influences from neo-conservatism to sun belt entrepreneurialism. This quest takes the authors from young churchgoers in Colorado Springs to gay gun clubs in Massachusetts to black supporters of school vouchers in Milwaukee. And they drive to the heart of a question that is relevant to us all: why does America seem so different?

How, in a relatively short time, did America veer so far to the right as to become incomprehensible to Europe, as it would no doubt be to Richard Nixon? And why is it likely to remain so no matter who occupies the Oval Office? Like latter-day de Tocquevilles, English journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge explain this new America, and the conservative movement that shaped it, with a freshness and clarity that elude most native observers. The Right Nation is an indispensable guide to the mystery of American difference that will illuminate readers on both the right and left.

From the bestselling authors of The Right Nation , a visionary argument that our current crisis in government is nothing less than the fourth radical transition in the history of the nation-state

Dysfunctional It’s become a cliché, and most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us, that is a seriously limited view of things. In fact, there have been three great revolutions in government in the history of the modern world. The West has led these revolutions, but now we are in the midst of a fourth revolution, and it is Western government that is in danger of being left behind.

Now, things really are different. The West’s debt load is unsustainable. The developing world has harvested the low-hanging fruits. Industrialization has transformed all the peasant economies it had left to transform, and the toxic side effects of rapid developing world growth are adding to the bill. From Washington to Detroit, from Brasilia to New Delhi, there is a dual crisis of political legitimacy and political effectiveness.

The Fourth Revolution crystallizes the scope of the crisis and points forward to our future. The authors enjoy extraordinary access to influential figures and forces the world over, and the book is a global tour of the innovators in how power is to be wielded. The age of big government is over; the age of smart government has begun. Many of the ideas the authors discuss seem outlandish now, but the center of gravity is moving quickly.

This tour drives home a powerful  that countries’ success depends overwhelmingly on their ability to reinvent the state. And that much of the West—and particularly the United States—is failing badly in its task. China is making rapid progress with government reform at the same time as America is falling badly behind. Washington is gridlocked, and America is in danger of squandering its huge advantages from its powerful economy because of failing government. And flailing democracies like India look enviously at China’s state-of-the-art airports and expanding universities.

The race to get government right is not just a race of efficiency. It is a race to see which political values will triumph in the twenty-first century—the liberal values of democracy and liberty or the authoritarian values of command and control. The stakes could not be higher.

On the street and in the corridors of power, religion is surging all over the world. From Russia to Turkey to India, nations that swore off faith in the last century, or even tried to stamp it out, are now run by avowedly religious leaders, and the destabilising effects of religion can be seen far from Iraq or the ruins of the World Trade Centre. Formerly secular conflicts like the one in Palestine have taken on an overtly religious cast, and religion plays a role in civil wars from Sri Lanka to Sudan. Along the tenth parallel, from West Africa to the Philippines, religious fervour and political unrest are reinforcing each other. Since the Enlightenment, intellectuals have assumed that modernization would kill religion, and that religious America is an oddity. God Is Back argues that religion and modernity can thrive together, and that the American way of religion is becoming the norm. Many things helped spark the global religious revival in the twenty-first century, including the failure of communism and the rise of globalisation; it is now being fuelled above all by market competition and a customer-driven approach to salvation. These are the qualities which have characterized America since the Founders separated church and state, creating a free market in religion defined by entrepreneurship, choice, and personal revelation, and as market forces reshape the world, the tools and ideals of American evangelism are now spreading everywhere. The global rise of faith will have a dramatic and far- reaching impact on our century. God Is Back shines a bright light on this hidden world of faith, from exorcisms in São Paulo to religious skirmishing in Nigeria, to harassed Muslims in India and vibrant house churches in China (where there are already more Christians than Communist Party members). If you want to understand the politics of this century, you cannot afford to ignore God, whether you believe in Him or not.

"[An] executive summary of modern political history studded with sweeping assertions and telling anecdotes." -- The New York Times Book Review
"Thought-provoking." -- Kirkus Reviews
"The Wake-Up Call argues that Covid-19 has exposed not just one president's shortcomings but a much more profound degeneration of governance dating back long before 2016...You will read no more interesting book on the political consequences of the pandemic than this." -- Niall Ferguson, author of Civilization: The West and the Rest
An urgent and informed look at the challenges America and world governments will face in a post Covid-19 world.
The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed that governments matter again, that competent leadership is the difference between living and dying. A few governments proved adept at handling the crisis while many others failed. Are Western governments healthy and strong enough to keep their citizens safe from another virulent virus—and protect their economies from collapse? Is global leadership passing from the United States to Asia—and particularly China?
The Wake-Up Call addresses these urgent questions. Journalists and longtime collaborators John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge identify the problems Western leaders face, and outline a detailed plan to help them become more vigilant, better prepared, and responsive to disruptive future events.
The problems that face us are enormous; as The Wake-Up Call makes clear, governments around the world must re-engineer the way they operate to successfully meet the challenges ahead.

Chosen by BusinessWeek as One of the Top Ten Business Books of the Year
With apologies to Hegel, Marx, and Lenin, the basic unit of modern society is neither the state, nor the commune, nor the party; it is the company. From this bold premise, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge chart the rise of one of history’s great catalysts for good and evil.
In a “fast-paced and well-written” work (Forbes), the authors reveal how innovations such as limitations on liability have permitted companies to rival religions and even states in importance, governing the flow of wealth and controlling human affairs–all while being largely exempt from the rules that govern our lives.
The Company is that rare, remarkable book that fills a major gap we scarcely knew existed. With it, we are better able to make sense of the past four centuries, as well as the events of today.