Tom Frank Watch

A very nice profile of Tom Frank in the Washington Post.

Keith Gessen reviews Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? in the Fall Dissent. It's not available on-line yet, but worth reading. Click the link and subsribe to the leading journal of America's democratic left.

Ronald Brownstein in The American Prospect says that Frank's book is "a smart and trenchant contribution to the liberal argument, and a fun read as well." But he has some words of criticism, as well.

Keillor, like Frank, seems mystified that anyone who folds his own laundry would vote Republican. But the days of a political alignment defined solely, or even predominantly, by class are gone. Many Americans, on both sides of the income divide, don’t consider it a “derangement” to express their cultural values at least as much as their economic interests in their vote. Overall, Frank and Keillor have written books of grace, empathy, and insight. But in assuming that Democrats can only win by resurrecting the politics of Franklin Roosevelt and Hubert Humphrey, they are steering through the rearview mirror.