America Last

The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators

By: Jacob Heilbrunn

Narrated by: Kent Klineman

In America Last, Jacob Heilbrunn, a highly respected observer of the American Right, demonstrates that the infatuation of American conservatives with foreign dictators is not a new phenomenon.

It dates to WWI, when some conservatives, enthralled with Kaiser Wilhelm II, openly rooted for him to defeat the forces of democracy. In the 1920s and 1930s, this affinity became even more pronounced as Hitler and Mussolini attracted a variety of American admirers. Throughout the Cold War, the Right evinced a fondness for autocrats such as Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, while some conservatives wrote apologias for the Third Reich and for apartheid South Africa. The habit of mind is not really about foreign policy, however. As Heilbrunn argues, the Right is drawn to what it perceives as the impressive strength of foreign dictators, precisely because it sees them as models of how to fight against liberalism and progressivism domestically.

America Last is a guide for the perplexed, identifying and tracing a persuasion—or the "illiberal imagination"—that has animated conservative politics for a century now. Since the 1940s, the Right has railed against communist fellow travelers in America. Heilbrunn finally corrects the record, showing that dictator worship is a longstanding tradition within modern American conservatism that cannot be ignored—and what it means for us today.

©2024 Jacob Heilbrunn (P)2024 Tantor

Powerful historical political commentary

This book answered many questions about how the current MAGA beliefs which seem to negate the ideological underpinnings of the American Constitution.
This is TRULY a “must read.” The narrator has a reading style that is modulated in a distracting way and is the book’s only downside.

Halting reading is hard to stand

I’m very interested in the topic, but the reading is very halting. It’s like they recorded every word then stitched it together. Audio is difficult to listen to for long.

The History the American Right Hopes You’ll Forget

Incredible parallels highlighted in this book between the rhetoric of the past and present.

The consistency with the American right wing’s advocacy of the most obviously immoral actors while posturing as the owner of the moral high ground at any given point in time is evergreen and egregious.

Extremely important read for anyone tired of the modern right gaslighting with historical revisionism.

Performance So Bad It Beggars Belief

I honestly don't think it would be possible to make a worse performance of this book even if you were deliberately trying to fabricate a comically awful parody. The jerkiness of the reading completely sabotaged the quality of the experience. I'm scratching my head wondering WHY they made it so jerky. Do they expect everyone to listen at 2X speed? It is so jerky that it sounds like someone inserted a half second silence every second to vandalize the recording.

I bought this book without first reviewing the performance, because I am keenly interested in the subject and Jacob Heilbrunn's take, and I thought I could rely on Audible to do an acceptable recording, but THIS PERFORMANCE IS SIMPLY NOT PUBLISHABLE. Why would Audible publish this crap? Why??? This is the last time I will ever automatically buy an Audible recording based on nothing other than my interest in the book without first checking the performance. The fact that Audible would publish this god AWFUL content makes one suspect that it was never reviewed by an editor or QA team, and that suggests that there is something deeply wrong with their publishing model.

DON'T BUY THIS AUDIOBOOK!!!!!!! Buy the Kindle instead and use some kind of Text-to-Speech service to listen. Seriously, it will be better than the "performance" you get in the Audible version, assuming it was even a "performance" by a human. I begin to doubt that it was, because I can't imagine any human reading the text that badly.

Bad narration

The bad narration made it very difficult to listen to - I would be so focused on the LONG pauses and halting delivery that it would be difficult to follow the contents of the book.

Excellent history

American history is the best kept secret in our society. Leaning towards fascism has been woven into our political leadership since the late 19th century. It’s still alive and festering today.

So frustrating

The history was engrossing, the story well written, and I kept trying to listen to it. Finally stopped trying because I found the narration to be acutely painful.

The Worst Narration Ever?

I’ve never heard a worse narrated audiobook. Strange, clipped diction. Ponderously slow delivery. Odd, exaggerated pronunciation. I was keenly interested in the topic, but I rushed through at 1.5 speed just to finish it.

Great book. Horrific reading.

Great book filled with interesting facts and history. Not your average "Republicans bad" book. The reading however could be the worst I've ever heard. Librivox is better.

Great walk thru History

wholeni n enjoyed the history lesson it was a tad too heady for me. Actually it was almost a repeat of Ruth Ben-Ghiat's Strongmen or Rachel Meddow's Ultra.