Panes of the Glass Ceiling: The Unspoken Beliefs Behind the Law’s Failure to Help Women Achieve Professional Parity. By Kerri Lynn Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 247p. $110.00 cloth, $34.99 paper.

America Great Again (MAGA) that peeled additional white working-class voters off from the Democratic Party? Trump promised a vaguely defined restoration of an imagined past, when things really were better—at least for white people without college degrees. Muravchik and Shields show that while the past evoked might be imaginary, in real life—in these three towns and elsewhere— things were really getting worse. Partly, this is a function of public policy and growing inequality, as well-paying jobs leaving the area and, with them, ambitious young people. The Democratic Party seemed to serve well-educated cosmopolitans in large cities and then women, people of color, and even immigrants—everyone but them. Promises and proposals about policy aren’t very powerful politics here, partly because the new Trump voters haven’t paid much attention to the details or policy. They are, however, tuned into the reality of their communities and their lives. Here, the persona Trump projected proved to be of critical importance. The voters didn’t doubt that Trump was basically a self-interested con man, but the candidate’s promise—that he would also look out for them —resonated in ways that ambitious programmatic reform proposals did not. The conman’s pitch worked, the authors argue, because each of these communities maintained an “honor culture,” which means an admiration for men who vigorously defend their values and their families, without too much regard for formal rules or laws. They explain that “[a] person, especially a man, must not tolerate either insults or assaults, and must show his readiness to respond with violence if necessary” (p. 38). Trump, they observe, displayed “dragon energy” (p. 39) by fighting back— insulting offenders and encouraging supporters to domore than talk. Tough talks, and especially talk about toughness, were not bugs, but attractive features to would-be Trumpian voters. Coarse displays of machismo or conspicuously racist portrayals of others were attractive features to them. In contrast, the more careful cosmopolitan leadership of the Democratic Party, which prizes education, rules, and bureaucratic fairness, was yet another offense to those who are left behind. For Muravchik and Shields, Trump is seen as a “boss” who will take care of his people, with little regard for rules, compromise, or universal standards of justice. It’s a kind of patronage writ large, where loyalty is key. In many ways, it’s a throwback to an anachronistic party machine system, where a focus on merit defined, say, by education was viewed as a direct threat. Corruption is far less of a problem than failure to deliver for the constituencies for which you’re supposed to take care. Trump’s promise to think of “America First,” doesn’t work as a historical callback to the isolationist movement of the 1930s. It does, however, feed into xenophobia about the world beyond national borders as well as racism at home. Foreigners abroad—and Black and Brown people at home—don’t deserve the opportunities they’ve claimed, which are seen to be at the direct expense of white people, Trump’s people, who have been left behind. Anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and anti-Black rhetoric is seen as committing to taking care of real Americans instead. These voters don’t evaluate economic protectionism, isolationism, and buying American as policies, but by their intent—taking care of real Americans first. On Muravchik and Shields’s account, the continued erosion of coal mining and tobacco farming in Elliot County, Kentucky, provides a particularly clear illustration. It’s not that the jobs as farmers and miners were particularly good, but rather, that nothing as good has come to replace them. Beleaguered by changing norms, distant threats (health or climate change), and new regulations, options for a good life keep disappearing. The community is reluctant to believe promises of new jobs or a “Green New Deal” from politicians who seem to serve very different constituencies first. Viewed in this way, the revanchist rejection of Democratic Party promises is comprehensible, and support for Trump is what remains. We’re left with the authors’ dilemma: Can the Democratic Party regain their support? Is it worth trying? Taken together, these books will help with revising lecture notes for our introductory courses. They may also help in figuring out a more advanced American politics as well.