Through its history, populism has meant hope and progress, as well as hate and a desire to turn back the clock on American history. In her new preface, Catherine McNicol Stock provides an update and overview of the conservative face of rural America. She paints a comprehensive portrait of a long line of rural activists whose crusades against big government, bug business, and big banks sometimes spoke in a language of progressive populism and sometimes in a language of hate and bigotry. Rural Radicals breaks down the populism expressed by activists, confronts our conventional notions of right and left, and allows us to understand political factionalism differently.

Catherine McNicol Stock traces the lineage of extremist white rural politics. She draws clear links between contemporary hate groups and a long tradition of rural political movements characterized by a fierce commitment to the rights of small landowners and family farmers, and by a culture of vigilantism. Rural Radicals is a wilde ride.

A first-rate and highly accessible history of radicalism in rural America.

Catherine McNicol Stock is Barbara Zaccheo Kohn '72 Professor of History at Connecticut College. She is coeditor of The Countryside in the the Age of the Modern State, and the author of Main Street Crisis.