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Regnery Publishing
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Regnery Publishing is a publishing house based in Washington DC that is the (self-proclaimed) "nation’s preeminent conservative publisher." They "publish[...] books that are contrary to those of 'mainstream' publishers in New York" by such conservative luminaries as "Dinesh D'Souza, Armstrong Williams, Oliver North, Mark Steyn, and Steve Forbes."[1] One wonders why they left out Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Ted Nugent, and Peter Duesberg (yes, really).
Regnery was founded in the 1940s by Henry Regnery, who started his publishing career distributing the conservative newsletter Human Events. While they got involved in extreme wingnuttery by printing Bircher books, they also published a few works by socialists and Sybil, the famous book on split-personality (now dissociative) disorder. They helped launch William F. Buckley's career by publishing his first two books.
Currently, Regnery seems to be a clearinghouse for the bullshit no other publisher would ever touch. Some of their greatest hits include:
- High Crimes and Misdemeanors, by Ann Coulter. A book containing Vince Foster conspiracy theories, among others. It has also met with accusations of plagiarism.
- The Roots of Obama's Rage, by future convicted felon Dinesh D'Souza. Advances the infamous "Kenyan anti-colonial worldview" theory.
- Inventing the AIDS Virus, by Peter Duesberg. A work of AIDS denialism.
- Bias, by Bernie Goldberg. A "classic" exposing the bias of the liberal media.
- In Defense of Internment, by Michelle Malkin. A negationist history of Japanese internment during World War II. Not racistAh, vraiment?!?.
- Green Hell, by Steve Milloy. A work claiming that environmentalism is a communist conspiracy, as well as advancing denialist talking points on a number of environmental issues.
- Black Belt Patriotism, by Chuck Norris. It's Chuck Norris, what more could you want?
- Courting Disaster, by Marc Thiessen. A George Bush sockpuppet tells you how Barack Obama is inviting the next terrorist attack.[note 1]
- Unfit for Command, by John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi. John Kerry gets swiftboated.
Along with these, they offer a variety of books on fundamentalism, creationism, and Biblical pseudoarchaeology. A number of books by Newt Gingrich and Mark Skousen, the nephew of W. Cleon Skousen, are available. There is also some rather uncharacteristic woo as well, including a bunch of books on food woo, diet woo, and general quackery. And for some reason, you can still order books on Y2K.
Politically Incorrect Guides
Regnery publishes a series of books called the Politically Incorrect Guides or P.I.Gs, which are largely written to resemble the successful …for Dummies series from Wiley and Complete Idiot's Guide from Alpha Books. They are written primarily by right-wing hacks such as Tom Bethell and Jonathan Wells; it is generally agreed outside the wingnut world that they are both political (being heavily biased towards dogmatic conservatism) and incorrect (both scientifically and historically). The evolution blog Panda's Thumb initiated a series meant to be a point-by-point fisking of the PIG to Intelligent Design by noted ID advocate and would-be scientist Jonathan Wells; due to the sheer volume of stupid in that one book alone, the series never quite finished.[note 2]
Earlier editions ran with the tagline "Liberals have hijacked [insert topic here] for long enough. Now it's our turn." That last sentence was later changed to "It's time to set the record straight."
Educators may wish to get copies of the appropriate P.I.Gs to prepare themselves for misinformed students who have been indoctrinated with these books. (Yes, they are popular with parents in the home schooling movement.) At least one book from the list below[note 3] is actively recommended to Christian school and college students who want to argue back against atheist teachers.[2]
According to Regnery's website, the following Politically Incorrect Guides are available:
- The Vietnam War, by Phillip Jennings. We won Vietnam!
- The Sixties, by Jonathan Leaf. Dirty fucking hippies and their civil rights nonsense barely existed.
- The Founding Fathers, by Brion McClanahan. America is a Christian Nation and the Founding Fathers would cut taxes if they were around today!
- The Great Depression and the New Deal, by Robert P. Murphy. The government caused the Depression, and then FDR made it worse!
- The Civil War, by HW Crocker III. (The American Civil War, that is. No other civil war matters.) The Civil War wasn't about slavery, it was about states' rights![3]
- Western Civilization, by Anthony Esolen. The Enlightenment and later the progressive movements of the 19th century led to communism and fascism, but the Dark Ages? Pretty effin' awesome!
- The Middle East, by Martin Sieff. Muslims are inherently evil and Christians are inherently nonviolent.
- The Bible, by Robert J. Hutchinson.
- Hunting by Frank Miniter.
- The Constitution, by Kevin Gutzman. Judicial activism bad, originalism good.[4]
- Capitalism, by Robert P. Murphy. The free market always wins. (But would you expect anything else from a fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute?)
- Global warming and Environmentalism, by Chris Horner. Global warming? More like Al Gore blowing hot air, 'mirite?
- The South (and Why It Will Rise Again), by Clint Johnson. No really, that's the actual title. The Lost Cause of the South lives![5]
- American and English Literature, by Elizabeth Kantor.
- Darwinism and Intelligent Design, by Jonathan Wells.
- Women, Sex and Feminism, by Carrie Lukas. Nothing beats Kinder, Küche, Kirche.
- Science, by Tom Bethell. 31 flavors of science denial.[6]
- Islam and the Crusades, by Robert Spencer. Islam equals Wahhabism.
- American History, by Thomas Woods. Another Mises fellow and Neo-Confederate. You see where this is going.[7][8][9]
- The British Empire, by H.W. Crocker III, the guy who also wrote their pro-states-rights (American) Civil War book. The tag line on the cover: "Three Cheers for Colonialism!"[note 4]
- Socialism, by Kevin D. Williamson, deputy managing editor of National Review. Because central planning and centralized authority never works. In government, that is.
External links
- Home page
- Human Events
- Review of the guides to science, evolution, and global warming
- Parody of the PIGs
- Neo-Confederate Interview
Notes
- ↑ Which is funny, given that Obama was responsible for the downfall of terror masterminds Osama bin Laden, Muammar al-Gaddafi, and many others.
- ↑ In fact, it seems to be ongoing. After nearly sputtering to a stop in 2010, two new titles about the British Empire (they're fans of it — their ancestors must have been Tories) and socialism were added in 2011.
- ↑ The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible
- ↑ The exclamation point is part of the tag line. It isn't added as commentary, although it could be considering that the book was written by an American. You know, those guys who were the first to fight against British colonialism.
References
- ↑ From the publisher
- ↑ How to Shut Up an Atheist from Townhall.com (surprise, surprise...)
- ↑ The Original Culture War, a review by Peter Bacon in the Harvard Political Review, March 4, 2009
- ↑ Whistling Dixie, a review by Matthew J. Franck in the Claremont Review of Books, Vol. VIII , Number 1 - Winter 2007/08
- ↑ Review by John F. Marszalek
- ↑ Review by Chris Mooney and further commentary
- ↑ Review by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
- ↑ Review by David Greenburg
- ↑ Mainly Incorrect, a review by John B. Kienker in the Claremont Review of Books, Vol. V, Number 2 - Spring 2005