In 1981, MacLean completed a four-year, combined-degree, B.A./M.A program in history at Brown University, graduating magna cum laude.

[6] In 2013, MacLean participated in SPNC panels and forums held in opposition to the legislative agenda of Republican majority of the North Carolina General Assembly.

William D. Jenkins called MacLean's historical analysis "well-written, yet flawed", because it is "too readily dismissive of the influence of religious and cultural beliefs on human activity.

"[13] In the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, J. Morgan Kousser offered a critical review, saying that "MacLean makes elementary errors long identified by sociologists and historians".

Kenneth W. Mack praised MacLean for having helped to reintegrate legal frameworks into the discussion of civil rights after it had been neglected by historians.

The book focuses on the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan and his work developing public choice theory, as well as the roles of Charles Koch and others in nurturing the libertarian movement in the United States.

MacLean argues that these figures undertook "a stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, at both the state and national levels back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation.