The Stranger Next Door

“Subtle, textured, and urgent . . . This crucial history of right-wing resentments speaks across recent decades of US politics.”
—Judith Butler

“The second edition of The Stranger Next Door could not be more relevant to the current backlash of homophobia and transphobia in the United States. This book is brimming with insights on how personal anxieties about the ‘other’ can turn into ugly political campaigns and how concerns about economic and social precarity can fuel, often indirectly, bigotry and exclusion.”
—Alexandra Minna Stern, author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate

“By combining the meticulousness of an ethnographer with a writer’s commitment to storytelling, Stein has written a book that’s surprisingly compelling—or, better, compelling because it’s surprising.”
—David L. Kirp, The Nation

“The Stranger Next Door’s contemporary subject and theoretical breadth, coupled with a remarkable lack of jargon, should make it a sociological classic.”
—Mary Bernstein, American Journal of Sociology

“A fascinating look at the psychology of fear and persuasion.”
—Monica Drake, The Oregonian

“Every liberal ought to read this. . . . Arlene Stein provides an important depiction of life in a town which became a vortex of national and local issues.”
—Tex Sample, Christian Century

“What’s especially valuable about Stein’s book is her detailed look at each individual’s take on the meaning of the campaign and her patient exploration of the wide variety of forces shifting the ground of these people’s lives.”
—E. J. Graff, American Prospect

“In her cogent analysis of just how sickeningly simple it is to create an ‘other,’ a ‘stranger’ upon whom blame for our problems may be shifted, Stein has touched to the very heart of the social upheaval in America today.”
—Dan Hays, Salem (Oreg.) Statesman-Journal

“This book displays interpretive sociology at its best.”
—Robert N. Bellah, coauthor of Habits of the Heart and The Good Society