Rogue Elephant

Ever since Donald Trump won the GOP nomination in 2016, we’ve been waiting for a sharp political analyst, someone who knows political economy and knows political parties, to explain how the business class allowed Donald Trump to take over the Republican Party. In Paul Heideman, we finally have that person. The most sophisticated account, to date, of Trumpism and the American future. – Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind
When Donald Trump is gone - there will be more Donald Trumps! In this fresh and sophisticated interpretation of recent American politics, Paul Heideman explains how and why a fractious business elite, a hollow party, and plenty of billionaire money have made the Republicans an incubator for personalistic authoritarians likely to extend the Age of Trump well into the future. – Nelson Lichtenstein, author of A Fabulous Failure
Finally! The need for a lucid, well-researched history of the modern Republican Party has long been clear. Paul Heideman’s new study is especially good at illuminating the complex relations between the party’s political leaders and different parts of the business community. – Thomas Ferguson, Research Director at the Institute for New Economic Thinking
Moves beyond pat narratives explaining the GOP’s shift from the party of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to that of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Instead, Paul Heideman locates the roots for this sharp transformation in the factional divisions of the party and the remaking of the American business class. A fresh and bold reinterpretation of the recent history of the Republican Party and American politics more broadly. – Lily Geismer, author of Left Behind
In this piercing, ingenious account, Heideman unpacks why the Republican Party and the business elites that dominated it failed to rein in Donald Trump…Meticulous and robustly argued, this is a vital new perspective on recent political history. * Publishers Weekly, starred review *
Rogue Elephant, Heideman proposes a more dynamic and convincing account of rightward drift. Instead of two parties gliding rightward in unison, he emphasizes how parties in general have lost programmatic coherence, allowing political entrepreneurs to rush in and fill the vacuum. – Meagan Day * Jacobin *
Jacobin’s Best Books of 2025 * Jacobin *
The derangement of the Republican Party has been the central political development of recent US history. In Rogue Elephant, Paul Heideman has written a concise and highly readable account of the party’s evolution from the mid-20th century to the present. He focuses not on the development of right-wing ideas or shifts in voter opinion but on deeper structural shifts in US politics. – Daniel Geary * Irish Times *

Paul Heideman holds a PhD in American Studies from Rutgers University-Newark. His work has appeared in publications such as Jacobin, Dissent, and In These Times. He works as a history teacher in New York City.

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