Kim Phillips-Fein's recent book, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (Norton, 2009, and out in paperback in January 2010), was recently mentioned by NYT op-ed columnist Frank Rich, who wrote: "[Tea Party financial backers] are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled 'Invisible Hands' in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R."Phillips-Fein, who teaches history at New York University, has written and spoken about her research widely in the last year. Her own pieces can be found on The Huffington Post ("Fighting the New Deal All Over Again" and "'Invisible Hands': The Dangerous Power of Business"), and video presentations on BookTV, Progressive Book Club, and HNN (2009 OAH paper).
Phillips-Fein, who received her Ph.D. in history from Columbia University in 2005, received the school's Bancroft Dissertation Award in 2007 for "Top-Down Revolution: Businessmen, Intellectuals, and Politicians against the New Deal."