The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War

In the deluge of books rushing to explain the rise of conservative evangelicals' influence on American politics, Gilgoff's offering makes a unique contribution: he argues that press-shy James Dobson should be regarded as the most powerful evangelical spokesman of the last decade (surpassing Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson). Gilgoff, a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report , boasts extensive interview time with Dobson at the sprawling Focus on the Family campus in Colorado Springs, Colo., inside access that is complemented by excellent writing and a mother lode of information. Gilgoff argues that Dobson is a political powerhouse precisely because his constituency was built on dispensing no-nonsense family advice to millions of Americans desperate for help, not on any explicit political platform. When he ventures to make political statements, he commands a public trust few policy makers enjoy. Gilgoff traces the rise of evangelical influence in politics from the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition in the 1970s and 1980s to Focus on the Family in the 1990s and 2000s, walking readers through the backroom power brokering of everything from Roe v. Wade to Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court. This is a smart piece of investigative journalism. (Mar. 6)