larryhead
07-10-2008, 05:46 PM
Sounds good.. and still relevant...
" (CNN) -- Rick Perlstein could have called his book "Paranoia."
Perlstein
If Perlstein's history of the 1960s and early '70s in America has a throughline, it's mistrust. Parents don't trust their children. Enlisted men don't trust their officers. Blacks don't trust whites, Southerners don't trust Northerners, the Silent Majority doesn't trust the Intellectual Establishment, and -- soon enough -- nobody trusts the government.
And in the midst of it all was Richard Nixon: Red-baiter, former vice president, failed gubernatorial nominee, punch line, political strategist and president, a master at playing both sides to maintain his hold on power. In doing so, he provided a roadmap for his successors.
Hence Perlstein's actual title: "Nixonland" (Scribner).
"I'm fascinated with how Americans fight with each other," says Perlstein, 39, who was born the year Nixon took office. "And the '60s is the best, the most -- besides the Civil War, I can't think of a more dramatic canvas. And Nixon fits in as the guy who exploited these tensions to create a new kind of politics that we're still living with now." Slideshow: What made the '60s the '60s »
Perlstein's book has earned rave reviews. In The Atlantic magazine, conservative writer Ross Douthat praised the author for "the rare gift of being able to weave social, political, and cultural history into a single seamless narrative." Newsweek's Evan Thomas called it "the best book written about the 1960s" in more than a quarter-century."
Full review:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/07/10/perlstein.nixonland/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
" (CNN) -- Rick Perlstein could have called his book "Paranoia."
Perlstein
If Perlstein's history of the 1960s and early '70s in America has a throughline, it's mistrust. Parents don't trust their children. Enlisted men don't trust their officers. Blacks don't trust whites, Southerners don't trust Northerners, the Silent Majority doesn't trust the Intellectual Establishment, and -- soon enough -- nobody trusts the government.
And in the midst of it all was Richard Nixon: Red-baiter, former vice president, failed gubernatorial nominee, punch line, political strategist and president, a master at playing both sides to maintain his hold on power. In doing so, he provided a roadmap for his successors.
Hence Perlstein's actual title: "Nixonland" (Scribner).
"I'm fascinated with how Americans fight with each other," says Perlstein, 39, who was born the year Nixon took office. "And the '60s is the best, the most -- besides the Civil War, I can't think of a more dramatic canvas. And Nixon fits in as the guy who exploited these tensions to create a new kind of politics that we're still living with now." Slideshow: What made the '60s the '60s »
Perlstein's book has earned rave reviews. In The Atlantic magazine, conservative writer Ross Douthat praised the author for "the rare gift of being able to weave social, political, and cultural history into a single seamless narrative." Newsweek's Evan Thomas called it "the best book written about the 1960s" in more than a quarter-century."
Full review:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/07/10/perlstein.nixonland/index.html?iref=mpstoryview