| |  | Books Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America |  | | | | | | | | | | Rating:  - Insightful history of the US 1955-1975
The book gives a detailed and insightful history of US politics 1955-1975, roughly the "Era of Nixon."Anyone who lived through those times, or anyone who is interested in the principal trends of American politics, will benefit from this analysis.It's really a very good book.
Rating: - Not what I expected
I thought it was going to be a visitors' guide to a new theme park.
Well, it was still pretty good.
Rating:  - NIxonland: Still With Us Today?
A sprawling, compulsively readable tale of a divided America spinning out of control over an unpopular, divisive war and civil rights and social justice issues. Perlstein argues that Richard Nixon helped end the consensus on Great Society liberalism, and divided America along lines that still divide her. Perlstein paints a picture of Richard Nixon as a brooding, jealous loner, filled with resentments against more privileged opponents like the Kennedys, but also a master demagogue and mass manipulator who achieved election to the Presidency by playing on emergent generational and racial divisions. Perlstein does a good job of weaving the distinctive music and culture of the 60s into the tale. Apparently hastily written in places, loose with some facts, and a bit repetitive at times (e.g., Perlstein seems enamored of the phrase 'soiling humiliation' when discussing Nixon trolling for votes), this is nonetheless a first-rate history of a turbulent era, the effects of which are still being felt today.
Rating:  - Perlstein Land
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.
Rating: - The right temperature
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.
| | < Previous | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Next > |
| | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | 
2004-2007 Copyright © , All right reserved.
the website powered by web hosting. |
|
|
