Why Choose johnkennethwhite.com
Our Faculty
Our Facilities
Our Facilities
Our faculty is composed of experts in their fields, from renowned scholars to successful industry professionals. They bring real-world experience and cutting-edge research into the classroom, ensuring that our students receive a top-quality education.
Our Facilities
Our Facilities
Our Facilities
Our campus boasts modern facilities equipped with the latest technology and resources. From state-of-the-art labs and research centers to comfortable student housing and dining options, johnkennethwhite.com offers everything students need to thrive.
Our Alumni
Our Facilities
Our Alumni
Our alumni are leaders in their fields and have gone on to achieve great things after graduation. With a vast network of successful graduates, johnkennethwhite.com offers students unparalleled opportunities for networking and career advancement.
books
Grand Old Unraveling. UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KANSAS, 2024
THE Latino/a American Dream. Co-edited with Sandra L. Hanson. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2016
American Political Parties. Co-written with Matthew Kerbel. University Press of Kansas, 2022
SALES DATE: MARCH 6, 2024
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. The unraveling of the Grand Old Party has been decades in the making. Since the time of FDR, the Republican Party has been home to conspiracy thinking, including a belief that lost elections were rigged. And when Republicans later won the White House, the party elevated their presidents to heroic status—a predisposition that eventually posed a threat to democracy. Building on his esteemed 2016 book, What Happened to the Republican Party?, John Kenneth White proposes to explain why this happened—not just the election of Trump but the authoritarian shift in the party as a whole that led to the insurrection of January 6, 2021, and its aftermath.
White presents a clear and concise analysis of how the modern Republican Party came to be by tracing historical patterns that reach back to the 1930s. He argues that the rise of Republican authoritarianism has been decades in the making, going back to the desperation that took hold among party elites in the wake of twenty years of Democratic dominance between 1932 and 1952. The fear of losing that overtook the party during the Roosevelt period eventually led to an escalation of intrigue that included the rise of the John Birch Society in the 1950s and QAnon today. White traces the development of this culture of conspiracy theories within the GOP and explains how the emphasis on winning at any cost created a cult of personality and a willingness to seize power by any means necessary.
American Political Parties. Co-written with Matthew Kerbel. University Press of Kansas, 2022
THE Latino/a American Dream. Co-edited with Sandra L. Hanson. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2016
American Political Parties. Co-written with Matthew Kerbel. University Press of Kansas, 2022
American Political Parties is a core textbook on political parties in the United States that places the US party system into a framework designed around the disagreements between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. White and Kerbel argue that the two-party system in the United States began with a common agreement on the key values of freedom, individual rights, and equality of opportunity but that Hamilton and Jefferson disagreed—often vehemently—over how to translate these ideals into an acceptable form of governance.
THE Latino/a American Dream. Co-edited with Sandra L. Hanson. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2016
THE Latino/a American Dream. Co-edited with Sandra L. Hanson. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2016
THE Latino/a American Dream. Co-edited with Sandra L. Hanson. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2016
The “American Dream” means many things to many people, but in general it can be said that it connects the idea of freedom to the opportunity for prosperity and upward social mobility.
Sandra L. Hanson and John K. White have joined together with a group of social scientists to explore the attitudes, experiences, and expectations of Latinos in their quest for the American Dream. The Latino/a American Dream asks many timely questions, including: how do Latino/as view the American Dream? Has the recent economic downturn affected their hopes of achieving the Dream? What about recent immigrants? What about Latina women?
The answers to these questions and more draw on sociology, political science, and history to paint a multifaceted portrait of Latino/a opportunity in America, both real and perceived.
What Happened to the Republican Party? New York: Routledge Publishers, 2015.
The American Dream in the 21st Century. With S. l. Hanson. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 2011
THE Latino/a American Dream. Co-edited with Sandra L. Hanson. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2016
As the 2016 election campaign attests, the Grand Old Party―once moderate and even magnanimous―has fallen into a prison of its own making when it comes to presidential politics. After the debacle of the George W. Bush presidency and the rout of the Romney candidacy, Republicans said they must broaden their base, become more inclusive, and return to the warmth of Reagan idealism. Instead, what we have is a bitter, backbiting, and race- and gender-baiting campaign with a candidate more exclusive than any before him. How did we get here and how do we get out? This book tracks the modern history of the Republican Party and shows its decline, even while shining a light on its high points and urging it back in a positive direction. Every reader interested in the US presidential election, the primary process, and the clash of politics and culture will find something enlightening in John White’s exposition. Above all, he puts the Age of Trump into perspective, looking back as well as forward in his analysis.
The American Dream in the 21st Century. With S. l. Hanson. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 2011
The American Dream in the 21st Century. With S. l. Hanson. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 2011
The American Dream in the 21st Century. With S. l. Hanson. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 2011
The American Dream has long been a dominant theme in U.S. culture, one with enduring significance, but these are difficult times for dreamers. The editors of and contributors to The American Dream in the 21st Century examine the American Dream historically, socially, and economically and consider its intersection with politics, religion, race, gender, and generation.
The conclusions presented in this short, readable volume provide both optimism for the faith that most Americans have in the possibility of achieving the American Dream and a realistic assessment of the cracks in the dream. The last presidential election offered hope, but the experts here warn about the need for better programs and policies that could make the dream a reality for a larger number of Americans.
Barack Obama’s America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.
The American Dream in the 21st Century. With S. l. Hanson. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 2011
The American Dream in the 21st Century. With S. l. Hanson. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 2011
The election of Barack Obama to the presidency marks a conclusive end to the Reagan era, writes John Kenneth White in Barack Obama's America. Reagan symbolized a 1950s and 1960s America, largely white and suburban, with married couples and kids at home, who attended church more often than not.
Obama's election marks a new era, the author writes. Whites will be a minority by 2042. Marriage is at an all-time low. Cohabitation has increased from a half-million couples in 1960 to more than 5 million in 2000 to even more this year. Gay marriages and civil unions are redefining what it means to be a family. And organized religions are suffering, even as Americans continue to think of themselves as a religious people. Obama's inauguration was a defining moment in the political destiny of this country, based largely on demographic shifts, as described in Barack Obama's America.
The Values Divide. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2003.
The New Politics of Old Values. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1990
The Values Divide. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2003.
John White′s fascinating new book explores the increasingly dominant role values play in today′s public and private life, concluding that a serious rift in political and cultural values in America produced the astounding tie between George W. Bush and Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. White argues that while politically important, the present "values divide" goes much deeper than cultural conflicts between Republicans and Democrats. Today, citizens are reexamining their own intimate values––including how they work, live, and interact with each other––while the nation’s population is rapidly changing. Collectively the answers to these value questions, White contends, have remade both American politics and the popular culture.
Still Seeing Red. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998
The New Politics of Old Values. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1990
The Values Divide. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2003.
In Still Seeing Red, John Kenneth White explores how the Cold War molded the internal politics of the United States. In a powerful narrative backed by a rich treasure trove of polling data, White takes the reader through the Cold War years, describing its effect in redrawing the electoral map as we came to know it after World War II. The primary beneficiaries of the altered landscape were reinvigorated Republicans who emerged after five successive defeats to tar the Democrats with the "soft on communism" epithet. A new nationalist Republican party whose Cold War prescription for winning the White House was copyrighted to Dwight Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan
attained primacy in presidential politics because of two contradictory impulses embedded in the American character: a fanatical preoccupation with communism and a robust liberalism.
The New Politics of Old Values. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1990
The New Politics of Old Values. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1990
The New Politics of Old Values. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1990
Using Reagan's presidency as a case study, White ( The Fractured Electorate ) assesses the impact of widely shared values on politics. He places the president's enormous popularity in the context of change, detailing cultural trends that have reinforced Reagan's approach. White views the values of family, work, neighborhood, and freedom as "romantic visions that voters seek to emulate in their own lives." He makes effective use of public opinion data and advertising techniques to support his thesis and considers implications of "Reaganism" for future politics. Complementing Garry Wills's Reagan's America ( LJ 2/1/87) as a critique of the president's appeal, this serves as a useful handbook to 1980s politics.