American Demagogue: The Great Awakening and the Rise and Fall of Populism

A New York Times bestselling historian examines how demagoguery and the populism it inspires-for good and ill-is embedded in the very soul of our nation.

In September 1740, New England experienced a social earthquake. It arrived not in the form of a great natural disaster or an act of violence, but with the figure of a twenty-year-old preacher. People were abuzz with his stunning oratory, his colorful theatrics, and his almost ungodly sense of power and presence.

When George Whitfield arrived...