![nancy macclean nancy macclean](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jCb38QC4ofU/maxresdefault.jpg)
![nancy macclean nancy macclean](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HLFvMZUos00/Wn1uU1PikgI/AAAAAAAAwKw/YGaGKCFIxwIbXbWRl65NII0lPR7q_YIXACLcBGAs/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/S3_Nancy_Book_Split.jpg)
I thought that the book sounded really interesting, and purchased it on Kindle right after seeing the tweet (if anyone really cares, I am happy to provide a PDF of the Amazon order record), and began reading immediately. I first became aware of the book’s existence when I read this tweet by Jamelle Bouie on June 14, 2017. I want to supplement this by describing how the piece came into being. Steve notes various factual blunders in the above-linked response. It is also the problem with the way that she is dealing with my and Steve’s criticisms of her. I do believe that she is unfortunately sometimes prone to a combination of conspiratorial thinking and sloppy treatment of evidence, which she uses to reinforce rather than to interrogate her preconceptions. I should also make it clear that I don’t believe that Nancy MacLean is wicked or dishonest. So, at this point, since she appears to have repeatedly misrepresented in public what we wrote and why we wrote it, it’s probably a good idea to clear up the background to the piece. This follows on from a Jacobin podcast a couple of months ago, in which she said (suggesting, as best as I understand her, that there was something suspicious about this) that Steve and I “were very quick out the gate” and furthermore that it was “clear from the piece that we hadn’t read ,” that “their effort is a rather pathetic quest to deflect public attention from the crucial part of my book, which is how these ideas have been weaponized by the Koch donor network to achieve what it cannot achieve if it is honest,” and (perhaps conflating her claims about us with claims about others – it is not clear from context), “These guys just go after these silly things in the book and misrepresent them in order to create smog so that people will not encounter the important argument of the work.” Nor have I asked Corey about this, since he may very understandably not want to be dragged into this brouhaha. I note that I don’t have a Facebook account, so haven’t seen the context in which she made this claim. I don’t particularly want to get dragged back into the Nancy MacLean imbroglio, but I see, via my co-author Steve Teles, that she’s commented on Corey’s Facebook feed, suggesting both that Steve’s (and by implication, my) criticisms of her book are not those of an honest critic, and that Steve (and, by implication, me) didn’t show any signs of reading her book beyond skimming the intro. Attention conservation notice: This is a lengthy post looking to demonstrate, should demonstration be needed, that I am not a tool of the “Koch donor network.” Also: if you are interested in l’Affaire MacLean, your time is probably better spent reading this dissection of the book by Jennifer Burns in the new issue of History of Political Economy.