Although the political reality of “movement conservatism” is now sixty years old and three generations deep, it remains “a mystery, inside an enigma” to many academic and media commentators. As a central figure in the conservative movement for the past fifty years, Arnold Steinberg unwraps this mystery in a comprehensive personal memoir. His entertaining and informative five-decade history of American politics produces an encyclopedia of modern conservatism.

Not only explained are the principles underlying most of modern conservatism, both theoretical and applied, but also the principal figures, the educational and activist organizations as well as many of the operational techniques that have been used to create winning political coalitions. Then, with an eye to the future, Whiplash! concludes with an examination of both the “why” of the “whiplash” of the 2016 presidential election and what the Trump upset may mean for the future of American politics.