280 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / 9 halftones
History / United States - 20th Century | Political Science / Political Ideologies / Democracy | Political Science / Conservatism & Liberalism
Peter Adams’s The Insurrectionist is the first comprehensive biography of Major General Edwin A. Walker, a figure who, in the 1950s and 1960s, became a leader of a far-right political movement known for its elaborate conspiracy theories, authoritarianism, and uncompromising white supremacy. Sixty years before the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Edwin Walker was charged with insurrection and seditious conspiracy. He was arrested on orders from the attorney general after leading a deadly riot against federal marshals as they protected the first African American student attempting to register at the University of Mississippi. Those who flocked to Walker’s side believed an invisible government working with coconspirators in the Kremlin and United Nations would soon enslave America under a one-world dictatorship. Walker’s deep state conspiracy theory has echoed through American political culture into the age of QAnon, finding a new home among today’s far-right extremists.
Peter Adams teaches at Old Dominion University. He is the author of The Bowery Boys: Street Corner Radicals and the Politics of Rebellion and Politics, Faith, and the Making of American Judaism.
“The world has long needed a political biography of Edwin A. Walker, the army general turned conservative hellraiser. Peter Adams’s new book delivers in spades. Not only does The Insurrectionist make an important contribution to the growing literature on right-wing extremism, but Adams connects Walker’s conspiratorial worldview and reactionary politics to the conservative radicalism reverberating throughout America today.”—John S. Huntington, author of Far-Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism
“In this well-researched and riveting book, Peter Adams shows that the racism, misinformation, paranoia, and violence of Edwin A. Walker have a long and ominous history in American politics and society. The Insurrectionist provides essential context for readers wanting to better understand the current assaults on democracy.”—Tracy Campbell, author of The Year of Peril: America in 1942
“Edwin A. Walker’s life, as Adams expertly shows, is a sobering tale about the rise of modern authoritarianism and antidemocratic fervor that helps us understand the complex roots of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by insurrectionists on January 6, 2021.”—John Giggie, director, Summersell Center for the Study of the South at the University of Alabama
“Based on in-depth archival research and theoretical insights, The Insurrectionist delivers crucial contexts for understanding the current assault on democratic institutions and thus for analyzing these forces in an epic and ongoing battle.”—Orville Vernon Burton, coauthor of Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court
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