The Conservative Frontier

I didn't think I cared about how cattle drives worked in nineteenth-century West Texas. I had no inkling of how that might explain why Amarillo is presently the most right-wing city in the nation. But now I do. What this splendid book demonstrates is how, in the hands of a practitioner of style and erudition, narrative history can bridge centuries, making the connections between Then and Now feel both natural and fresh.--Rick Perlstein, historian and journalist, author of The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan Jeff Roche convincingly argues that the origins and strength of West Texas's deeply conservative politics lie in the distinctive history of the region's settlement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His evocative portrayal of West Texas shows that this vast but only lightly studied region has been at the center of national developments for more than a century.--Benjamin Heber Johnson, Loyola University Chicago, author of Texas: An American History The Conservative Frontier is a landmark study of the social, cultural, economic, and demographic factors that have shaped the political landscape of West Texas, making it the most conservative place in the nation. Deeply researched and compellingly written, Jeff Roche's careful reconstruction of a century of regional history, from 1876 to 1976, introduces us to a remarkable cast of characters, such as Pappy O'Daniel, J. Evetts Haley, and Robert Welch, whose shared commitment to hyper-patriotism, religious fundamentalism, anti-statism, anti-communism, free-market capitalism, and white supremacy provide a direct pathway to and a profound mirror on the national political present.--David M. Wrobel, Stony Brook University, author of America's West: A History, 1890-1950