Books like The political mind by George Lakoff

Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" explains how two distinct mental systems shape our judgments and decisions, offering insights into the biases that influence everyday choices.

Arlie Hochschild explores why voters in traditionally conservative regions support policies that seem contrary to their economic interests, using firsthand interviews and sociology of emotion.

A comprehensive history of the conservative movement in the 1960s through the lens of Barry Goldwater, a presidential candidate who challenged the status quo.

George Lakoff explains how conservative framing shapes American politics and offers progressives a strategic toolkit for reframing debates around shared values, empowering them to influence discourse and elections.

What do conservatives know that liberals don't? According to George Lakoff, they know that American politics is about morality and the family. Moral Politics takes a fresh look at how we think and talk about politics and shows that political and moral ideas develop in systematic ways from our models of ideal families. Lakoff reveals how family-based moral values determine views on such diverse issues as crime, gun control, taxation, social programs, and the environment. He shows why it is consistent for conservatives to oppose subsidies for the poor but endorse them for business, or for liberals to oppose the death penalty but support abortion. He also explains why liberal and conservative stances contain the constellations of policies they do. Drawing on studies showing that we think in terms of metaphorical concepts, Lakoff analyzes the language of political discourse and finds it rife with metaphors. He shows how both liberals and conservatives link morality to politics through the concept of family. But they diverge in their opposing ideas of what an ideal family is. Conservative metaphors are united by the concept of a patriarchal family in which the parent's role is to develop self-discipline in the child by enforcing strict rules. By contrast, liberals view caring interaction in the family as the most effective means of creating competent and responsible children.

Jan‑Werner Müller examines populism as a rejection of pluralism, arguing that populists claim exclusive moral representation of the people and can create authoritarian states. He outlines strategies for liberal democrats to counter such movements.

"We're often told that the United States is, was, and always has been a Christian nation. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals that the idea of 'Christian America' is an invention--and a relatively recent one at that. As Kruse argues, the belief that America is fundamentally and formally a Christian nation originated in the 1930s when businessmen enlisted religious activists in their fight against FDR's New Deal. Corporations from General Motors to Hilton Hotels bankrolled conservative clergymen, encouraging them to attack the New Deal as a program of 'pagan statism' that perverted the central principle of Christianity: the sanctity and salvation of the individual. Their campaign for 'freedom under God' culminated in the election of their close ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. But this apparent triumph had an ironic twist. In Eisenhower's hands, a religious movement born in opposition to the government was transformed into one that fused faith and the federal government as never before. During the 1950s, Eisenhower revolutionized the role of religion in American political culture, inventing new traditions from inaugural prayers to the National Prayer Breakfast. Meanwhile, Congress added the phrase 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance and made 'In God We Trust' the country's first official motto. With private groups joining in, church membership soared to an all-time high of 69%. For the first time, Americans began to think of their country as an officially Christian nation. During this moment, virtually all Americans--across the religious and political spectrum--believed that their country was 'one nation under God.' But as Americans moved from broad generalities to the details of issues such as school prayer, cracks began to appear. Religious leaders rejected this 'lowest common denomination' public religion, leaving conservative political activists to champion it alone. In Richard Nixon's hands, a politics that conflated piety and patriotism became sole property of the right. Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how the unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day"-- "In One Nation Under God, award-winning historian Kevin M. Kruse argues that the story of Christian America begins with the Great Depression, when a coalition of businessmen and religious leaders united in opposition to the New Deal. As Kruse shows, corporations from General Motors and Kraft Foods to J.C. Penney and Hilton Hotels, poured money into the coffers of conservative religious leaders, who in turn used those funds to attack FDR's New Deal administration as a program of "pagan statism" that perverted the central tenet of Christianity: the salvation of the individual"--

"Predisposed presents evidence that people differ politically not just because they grew up in different cultures or were presented with different information. All these factors certainly play their role but people also differ politically because they have diverse psychological, physiological and genetic traits. This biologically-based, physio-cognitive machinery influences much of what makes people who they are, including their personalities, preferences for occupation and leisure pursuits, tastes in art and music, strategies for child rearing and, yes, orientations to politics. In short, this machinery predisposes people to see and understand the world in different ways. These predispositions are in turn responsible for a significant portion of the political conflict that marks human history"--

This monumental work, complete here in one volume, undertakes to determine scientifically what distinctive personality traits characterize the phenomenon of prejudice. The authors' purpose is to discover the social psychological factors which have made it possible for the authoritarian type of man - a new concept of an "anthropological" species - to threaten the survival of the individualistic and democratic type prevalent in the past century and a half of our civilization. The book mobilizes the skills of the different branches of the social sciences in one common research program. Experts in the fields of social theory and depth psychology, depth analysis, clinical psychology, political sociology and projective testing have pooled their methods and resources. Working in the closest cooperation, they here present a detailed picture of the authoritarian type of man. By isolating the destructive germ of the authoritarian personality, the book lays a major foundation for long-range attack upon the anti-democratic forces in modern society. (from the back cover.)