It may be that the best way to understand the United States, and a social movement like the rise of the conservative right, is to read about it from a European perspective. After all, Americans have been pouring over Alexis de Tocqueville's writings for nearly 200 years trying to gain insights about their own country in the process. Alf Thomas Tonessen's book is no Democracy in America, but it is an insightful chronology of the events and people who created a political revolution in American politics.

Tonnessen, a lecturer in American Studies at the University of Oslo, uses journals, interviews and articles, as well as books, to tell his story of how Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich birthed the conservative movement. The two political adventurers are protagonists in a story that links the central players to one another and a movement that changed American politics. Viguerie's direct mail fundraising operation and Weyrich's organizational networking were central to the electoral successes Republicans enjoyed in the 1970s and in 1980, as well as much later.

It would be hard to find two more unlikely patriarchs of a social movement then Weyrich and Viguerie. Both were supporters of Barry Goldwater who moved the rocks of his landslide defeat aside to lay the foundation for a political renaissance. Weyrich was from Wisconsin, grew up Catholic and became a Republican the very year John Kennedy won the presidency in 1960. His was a lonely, but convicting, experience. Viguerie grew up in Texas, and cut his anti-communist political teeth by supporting the “two Macs,” Joseph McCarthy and Douglas Macarthur. What the two men had in common was a shared vision for a new conservative majority, something they believed possible when they talked to everyday citizens, but almost unthinkable in the halls of power.

The conservatism of both men was deep-seated, and resulted in their mutual opposition to the ideological compromises offered by President Richard Nixon, and their support for candidates willing to oppose the dominant Democrats and moderate Republicans in Congress. From these humble roots, Viguerie and Weyrich worked with others to create an infrastructure of political and legal interest groups, coalitions of grassroots activists, think tanks, journals of opinion, magazines and political action committees to counter the entrenched establishment of the left, and the equivocations of the conservatives.

The book is well-researched and complete as to important people and events. That virtue means that many issues like the conservative opposition to Richard Nixon, the importance of the Reagan candidacy, and the economic issues associated with each election are given brief mention. But this is no shortcoming, since virtually unknown events, like the founding of the Republican Study Committee (1973), the growth of Weyrich's Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (1970s), and the Council on National Policy (1981), are explained in detail. Interviews with both Weyrich and Viguerie allow the reader to pull back the curtain on conservative strategy meetings, targeted campaigns, and direct mail fundraising operations. The result is a behind-the-scenes understanding of something that the press, and many scholars, missed at the time.

Central to the book is the rise of evangelicals as a potent force in American politics, the so-called “sleeping dog” of the movement. The persuasion of Jerry Falwell by Richard Viguerie and Howard Phillips (who is Jewish) to lead the new organization makes especially good reading. “Out there is what might be called a moral majority,” said Viguerie, and Falwell declared in response, “that's it.” Such are the coincidences and insights that led to a social and political revolution.

The reader is able to sense the immense size of the task Weyrich and Viguerie faced in the 1970s, when they began to talk about traditional values, balanced budgets, and a Republican rebirth in a decade labeled “me,” with the rebellion of the 1960s still a faded flower memory. Yet they sensed, and Tonnessen is able to convey, that the seeds of contradiction in leftist policies and rhetoric were producing a harvest in the “Silent Majority,” neo-conservatism and main street businesses across the land. The story of these two men is really the story of millions of others who joined them in turning the tide of American politics.

If there is a peculiar European way of looking at American politics, it is that foreigners are often prone to give undue attention to leaders, and neglect the underlying social shifts that move people to action. Recall that the French had an admiration of George Washington, and an under-appreciation of the colonial Virginian aristocracy of which he was a part. Is Tonnessen prone to give too much applause to two figures, who never won electoral office or appeared on the forefront of the political stage? Perhaps, but that limitation is more than offset by the way the reader is able to see the birth of a social movement from the inside.