Books like this rarely come along, but when they do they are easy to spot. Rarely does a scholar synthesize such complex phenomena as social, political, religious, and economic change, over a period of decades, using not only a masterful reading of the secondary literature but innovative approaches to primary research. In To Serve God and Wal-Mart, her brilliant social study of the retailing giant, Bethany Moreton does this and more. She reveals the intimate and causal links between the postwar surge of Protestant evangelicalism, the rise of the Sun Belt service economy at the expense of the deindustrializing Rust Belt of the Northeast and Mid-west, and the growing strength of conservative politics and (not coincidentally) the increasingly ideological conservatism of the Republican Party.

To Serve God and Wal-Mart is not a traditional study of American big business. Moreton is not concerned so much with financial, economic, labor, or even business history as such, though her conclusions have implications for all of these fields. Instead, hers is a study of social change, and how it in turn affected American attitudes, popular and elite, on larger matters of political economy. Thus To Serve God and Wal-Mart contains more, much more, about religion, culture, and gender than one would normally find in a study of a very large American corporation. This novel approach is the book's signature strength and the source of much of its innovativeness, and it allows Moreton to make conceptual links that would otherwise escape an analyst of a company like Wal-Mart. For those more interested in Wal-Mart's finances and business strategy, they would be advised to read Nelson Lichtenstein's recent book The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business (2009).

Moreton's central thesis is that Wal-Mart's phenomenal growth was the product of both top-down and bottom-up factors, but it is her focus on the bottom-up – especially the women from the lower classes who worked and shopped at Wal-Mart – that is especially interesting and original. As macroeconomic forces beyond anyone's control began to change the face of the American economy, what was once a relatively small retailing enterprise in a rural backwater found itself right in the middle of a newly emerging zeitgeist of family values, Protestant evangelicalism, capitalist free enterprise, and southern charm. To Serve God and Wal-Mart thus sheds new light on the “southernization” of American politics and culture, much like another recent, original, and important book, Darren Dochuk's From Bible Belt to Sun Belt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (2010).

However, it is women, not normally considered to represent the vanguard of southern, evangelical, patriarchal business conservatives, who lie at the heart of Moreton's story. “Through the rising Sun Belt service sector,” she writes, “middle-aged Wal-Mart moms taught the country a new way to imagine the economy. The women that [company founder Sam] Walton hired gave Wal-Mart Country its soul” (48). Moreton takes these mostly working-class, lower-income women seriously, does not demean their traditions or dismiss their religious politics as a form of false consciousness, and generally avoids the condescending tone common to many academic studies of Christian conservatism. By taking these women on their own terms, Moreton is better able to highlight their role in fostering a “Wal-Mart culture” in American business and politics.

To Serve God and Wal-Mart is a stunningly original book. It will be of interest to many subfields of American history, including religious, economic, social, cultural and political studies. It is one of the most persuasive and comprehensive histories of the postwar rise of conservatism, and also one of the most interesting.