Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America | 
 enlarge | Author: Rick Perlstein
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 2271
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Scribner Hardcover Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 896
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 2
ISBN: 0743243021
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.924
EAN: 9780743243025
ASIN: 0743243021
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Mint, brand new, and never opened to read, Perfect for someone on your gift list , Beach Daze, or your own book collection. Ready to ship AFTER 7/21. BCE
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Amazon.com
Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: How did we go from Lyndon Johnson's landslide Democratic victory in 1964 to Richard Nixon's equally lopsided Republican reelection only eight years later? The years in between were among the most chaotic in American history, with an endless and unpopular war, riots, assassinations, social upheaval, Southern resistance, protests both peaceful and armed, and a "Silent Majority" that twice elected the central figure of the age, a brilliant politician who relished the battles of the day but ended them in disgrace. In Nixonland Rick Perlstein tells a more familiar story than the one he unearthed in his influential previous book, Before the Storm, which argued that the stunning success of modern conservatism was founded in Goldwater's massive 1964 defeat. But he makes it fresh and relentlessly compelling, with obsessive original research and a gleefully slashing style--equal parts Walter Winchell and Hunter S. Thompson--that's true to the times. Perlstein is well known as a writer on the left, but his historian's empathies are intense and unpredictable: he convincingly channels the resentment and rage on both sides of the battle lines and lets neither Nixon's cynicism nor the naivete of liberals like New York mayor John Lindsay off the hook. And while election-year readers will be reminded of how much tamer our times are, they'll also find that the echoes of the era, and its persistent national divisions, still ring loud and clear. --Tom Nissley
Product Description
Told with urgency and sharp political insight, Nixonland recaptures America's turbulent 1960s and early 1970s and reveals how Richard Nixon rose from the political grave to seize and hold the presidency.Perlstein's epic account begins in the blood and fire of the 1965 Watts riots, nine months after Lyndon Johnson's historic landslide victory over Barry Goldwater appeared to herald a permanent liberal consensus in the United States. Yet the next year, scores of liberals were tossed out of Congress, America was more divided than ever, and a disgraced politician was on his way to a shocking comeback: Richard Nixon. Between 1965 and 1972, America experienced no less than a second civil war. Out of its ashes, the political world we know now was born. It was the era not only of Nixon, Johnson, Spiro Agnew, Hubert H. Humphrey, George McGovern, Richard J. Daley, and George Wallace but Abbie Hoffman, Ronald Reagan, Angela Davis, Ted Kennedy, Charles Manson, John Lindsay, and Jane Fonda. There are tantalizing glimpses of Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Jesse Jackson, John Kerry, and even of two ambitious young men named Karl Rove and William Clinton -- and a not so ambitious young man named George W. Bush. Cataclysms tell the story of Nixonland: - Angry blacks burning down their neighborhoods in cities across the land as white suburbanites defend home and hearth with shotguns - The student insurgency over the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention - The fissuring of the Democratic Party into warring factions manipulated by the "dirty tricks" of Nixon and his Committee to Re-Elect the President - Richard Nixon pledging a new dawn of national unity, governing more divisively than any president before him, then directing a criminal conspiracy, the Watergate cover-up, from the Oval Office Then, in November 1972, Nixon, harvesting the bitterness and resentment born of America's turmoil, was reelected in a landslide even bigger than Johnson's 1964 victory, not only setting the stage for his dramatic 1974 resignation but defining the terms of the ideological divide that characterizes America today. Filled with prodigious research and driven by a powerful narrative, Rick Perlstein's magisterial account of how America divided confirms his place as one of our country's most celebrated historians.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
 Perlstein Land July 19, 2008
Perlstein is a scion of the 60s. Through reading a lot of newspapers and mining a lot of television, he has constructed an imaginary world called Nixonland. Nixonland, like Hobbitland, exists in the mind of the fabulist. Perlstein has also reconstructed, in this same manner, many of the events of the 50s and 60s in fascinating and often compelling narrative detail. As a popular history of these times, Nixonland is an exciting and sometimes fresh read. As a paradigm for understanding America in the postwar era, the concept of `Nixonland' is extremely limited. The limitations of the concept are readily apparent, for example, in the race narrative that Perlstein grapples with throughout the book.
To conclude, as Perlstein does, that Nixonland `has not ended yet' is true but meaningless. Nixonland indeed exists, but not in the way Perlstein imagines. In fact it is the imaginary place where the 60s go to die. It is the remote magic mountain nursing home for those unable or unwilling to recover from the past, where the patients live in the twilight of a rapidly fading era. Most of the kids today don't visit the nursing home, except occasionally on grandpa's birthday, when he tells them stories of cities burning, John and Yoko in bed for peace, and `radical' philosophy be-ins, but leaves out the part where he took acid and ran half-naked in the streets before becoming a lawyer and moving to the suburbs. Nixonland is the same kind of invented place as John Ford's American West.
Had Nixon never become president, the arc of his career would have still held some interest for historians, but he hardly invented the Orthogonians versus Franklins (Perlstein's rhubric) conflict, a theme that has been salient throughout American history. Nixon was one player in the postwar drama, and a fascinating one, skilled at exploiting social rifts for political gain, but hardly the master metallurgist forging a new social alloy. The subtitle of the book includes the phrase, `the fracturing of America'. It's hard to know what that means, especially after reading the book. Fractures, fissures, social conflict (think FDR and his `moneyed interests'), and violence have marked American life for centuries, driving the social dynamic of the country. Nixon is one variant of the venal, cynical, manipulative, and corrupt American politician. In this he has keen competition, including among those who achieved the presidency.
The book repays reading and one should anticipate with enthusiasm a further installment where Perlstein will presumably draw out the picture of a fractured America.
 The right temperature July 17, 2008
Rick Perlstein's new book, "Nixonland", appeals to two groups, I would suggest; those of us who grew up with Richard Nixon and those who missed him in real life, only to be assuaged by his legacy. On those two levels, the author has scored well...he's attracted both audiences.
As Franklin Roosevelt commanded the first half of the American twentieth century, Richard Nixon assumed the latter. Perlstein couches his book in "Franklin" and "Orthogonian" sides...the latter, from which, Nixon battled. It's a successful argument and one that reminds us that although the author grew up at a time after Nixon had faded from view, he has his temperature down to a tee.
"Nixonland" is brilliant and a book I highly recommend. This may be the year of Obama...or maybe the year of "anti-Bush". Yet Nixon set the stage for it all, and the parallels to the current administration bear witness to all that went before, as defined by President Nixon, himself.
Almost a great book July 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love this book. I hate this book. It is one of the best histories of post-'60s politics ever written. It is lousy with stupid factual errors that detract from its overall greatness. The writing at times soars; other times one must reread whole paragraphs to find the verb. Still, it was the book I grabbed every day to be entertained, amused, enlightened and only occasionally irked. It is a classic in search of a good editor and a corps of fact checkers.
Welcome to Nixonland? July 2, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The best thing about this book is Pearlstein's descriptions of key but forgotten moments of the mid sixties to early seventies American trainwreck. The grousing ex-Vice President Nixon gets a tongue-lashing from a fresh-faced Roger Ailes, McGovern only allow reporters to source his desire to jettison Thomas Eagleton as that of a senior McGovern aide and Jimmy Stewart sweats at the 1972 Republican convention podium because the air conditioning had been sabotaged. There are hundreds of brief but revealing portraits that convey a sense of real people caught up in a crazy time.
As history, his thesis seems a bit forced; these critical years formed our own times. While this maybe true, I wondered how much he left out in order to convey this belief. He doesn't build an argument idea by idea but image by image. In a sense, "Nixonland" plays out like a Michael Moore documentary, compelling, absorbing, immediate but a bit too clever and clear to be completely believable.
But it is a great read and for anyone who finds Nixon one of the most fascinating political characters of the 20th century, Pearlstein gives the man a grandeur, a desperation, an unhinged quality that feels right. He has the great insight that Nixon was truly popular, loved even. He wasn't just an actor conveying an appealing blandness that made him seem safe among the crazies like Lester Maddox or the charismatics like Bobby Kennedy or the overheated like Hubert Humphrey. Nixon got people to root for him as if he was their surrogate most tellingly by creating a club for all the outsiders not welcomed by the elites who called themselves the Franklins. He named the club the Orthogonians and used it as a platform to win his college's student body presidency. It was an approach he used again and again, marshalling the forces of mass resentments to ever more political power.
But there is one thing I found myself bothered by as I read the book. How can you explain the violence of that time? There was civil rights, the student protests, police brutality, the killings in Vietnam and none of it fit neatly together but gave the era a crazy, recklessness, sensibility but it was an energized society very different from the atomized culture of today that is refracted through flat screen TVs and computer monitors. Did that violence lead to exhaustion and a reaction that made subsequent generations dubious of angry expressions of radicalism? Dubious of all radicalism? Did that violence more than anything lead to the apathy of the present day where torture and denial of due process and wars waged without scrutiny are the legacy? I feel like this disturbing question which Pearlstein's vivid and detailed reporting raises, is more than he wants to tackle yet it seems to me to be central to understanding our times.
Fascinating July 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Perlstein intertwines an analytic history of Richard Nixon's political career with a description and analysis of the forces that tore asunder the broad-based consensus that seemed to have emerged with Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory in 1964. He presents a vast panorama of people and events, which are interesting in themselves and serve to elucidate both the upheavals that convulsed American society between 1965 and 1972 and the motives and character of one of the most complex political leaders of the twentieth century (a man who was repulsive, pathetic, and yet, in an odd way, appealing). Perlstein accomplishes all three functions that a historian should perform. He narrates what happened, provides plausible explanations, and enables the reader to relive it.
However, I think that Perlstein only partially proves his basic thesis. Only four times in American history has a presidential candidate received over 60 percent of the popular vote: Harding in 1920, Roosevelt in 1936, Johnson in 1964, and Nixon in 1972. Harding's victory was followed by a decade of Republican dominance, which was ended by the Depression. Roosevelt's victory was followed by sixteen years of Democratic dominance. It was ended by the combination of an economic boom, which deprived Depression-era economic issues of their appeal, and by an immensely popular military hero. Just eight years elapsed between Johnson's and Nixon's victories. Nothing in that period altered the way most Americans lived to anywhere near the same degree as the Depression and post-World War II economic boom. So how did Nixon pull off this stunning reversal?
Perlstein answers this question in the subtitle of his book: by "the fracturing of America." Nixon succeeded in expressing the resentments of those Americans who felt that "liberals," "cosmopolitans," and "intellectuals" ignored their needs and concerns and scorned their ideals and loyalties. Nixon could achieve this both because he shared these resentments and because he had an uncanny ability to discern the shifts in American attitudes that were taking place below the surface of events. ("Subterranean" is one of Perlstein's favourite words when he describes this ability (e.g., pages 213, 232, 509).)
I think that Perlstein is partially correct. However, he himself points out a serious problem with his thesis. Beginning in late 1969, Vice President Agnew launched an onslaught against "an effete corpse of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals" and "nattering nabobs of negativism." What Agnew was supposed to be doing was giving a voice to what Nixon called "the silent majority." But, as Perlstein points out, in the Congressional election of 1970, nearly all the candidates whom Nixon favored lost. Similarly, Nixon's overwhelming victory in 1972 was accompanied by a decisive Congressional victory for Democrats, and especially liberal Democrats. Perlstein does not point out that, by contrast, the victories of the three other presidents who were elected with over 60 percent of the popular vote were accompanied by huge majorities for their parties in Congress and in state and municipal elections.
Perlstein ends his book with the election of 1972. The last two sentences are "How did Nixonland end? It has not ended yet." It is true that the ideas, loyalties, and resentments that emerged between 1965 and 1972 are still basic to the way the Democrats and Republicans and the American people in general define themselves. However, when the Republicans gained control of Congress it was under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, who eschewed Agnew's and Nixon's vituperation and projected a non-confrontational, benevolent image. Then the Democrat Bill Clinton finally responded decisively to two of the complaints that alienated many Americans from liberalism: welfare and crime. He did not respond to them in the way liberals constantly urged, by solving their root causes. His administration simply stopped giving money to welfare recipients. With regard to criminals, federal, state, and municipal governments followed the precept of the proverbial barroom bigot: "Lock them up and throw away the key."
Inexplicably to me, Perlstein pays remarkably little attention to another basic factor that emerged between 1965 and 1972 and that turned many Americans against liberalism: institutionalized anti-White discrimination (i.e., affirmative action). Instead, he concentrates on Nixon's pandering to those who were hostile to Black demands. He never mentions the fascinating fact that it was Nixon who personally, and in opposition to Congressional Democrats, imposed affirmative action throughout American society (S. Farron, The Affirmative Action Hoax, pages 287-8, 374).
Perlstein chronicles in detail Nixon's shameless lying and horrific misuse of presidential power. However, on his telling, Nixon was no worse than any other national political figure of the 1960s and early 1970s. The Kennedy brothers (John, Robert, and Edward), Lyndon Johnson, Nelson Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, and John Lindsay were just as unscrupulous as Nixon. According to Perlstein, only George Romney and George McGovern were politically honest; and he depicts the former as a fool and the latter as an incompetent bungler. Indeed, with regard to Nixon's normalization of relations with China, Perlstein grants to him both courage and wisdom (page 572: "a pragmatic understanding few others were wise enough to reach"); and Perlstein grants those attributes to no other politician.
Other readers will come to other conclusions. But few will be able to read this book without engaging in a continuous dialogue with it.
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