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Alum's New Book Examines Carter and Religious Right

J. Brooks Flippen, a member of the Class of 1982, has just published his third book. Scheduled for formal release on March 15, is being published by the University of Georgia Press.

Brooks is a professor of history at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Okla. In the book, he describes the way that Carter “unintentionally alienated both social liberals and conservative Christians, thus ensuring that the debate over these moral ‘family issues’ acquired a new prominence in public and political life.”

Among early reviews of the work, Rice historian John B. Boles calls it ” clear, accurate, balanced account of both Carter’s appeal in 1976 and his fall from grace in the eyes of the hyper-evangelicals.” And Matthew D. Lassiter of the University of Michigan describes the book as a “dramatic and detailed account of the mobilization of the Religious Right, its battles against feminism and gay rights, and Jimmy Carter’s futile attempts to placate all sides of the culture wars that exploded in the late 1970s.”

Brooks majored in sociology and anthropology at W&L and received his M.A. from the University of Richmond and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. He has taught at Southeastern since 1995. His previous books were and

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