Rick Perlstein is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan; Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, a New York Times bestseller picked as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by over a dozen publications; and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, which won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Award for history and appeared on the best books of the year lists of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. His essays and book reviews have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Village Voice, and Slate, among others. A contributing editor and board member of In These Times magazine, he lives in Chicago.
"An absorbing political and social history of the late 1970s...The
joy of this book, and the reason it remains fresh for nearly a
thousand pages of text, is that personality and character
constantly confound the conventional wisdom. Perlstein’s broad
theme is well known, partly because he has made it so through his
three earlier volumes (Before the
Storm, Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge) on the
rise of the New Right in American politics. In the 1960s and 70s,
liberals overplayed their hand and failed to see the growing
disaffection of Americans who felt cut out or left behind. (Sound
familiar?) But Perlstein is never deterministic, and his sharp
insights into human quirks and foibles make all of his books
surprising and fun...The 1980 election marks the end of this book,
and, Perlstein says in his acknowledgments, the end of his
four-volume saga on the rise of conservatism in America, from the
early stirrings of Barry Goldwater to the dawn of the Age of
Reagan. One hopes Perlstein does not stop
there. Reaganland is full of portents for the current
day."—Evan Thomas, The New York Times Book Review
“The pointillist canvas of Reaganland is
mesmerizing…Perlstein’s book certainly presents the fullest picture
we have of the Reagan years.” —Thomas Meaney, The Nation
"Perlstein masterfully connects deep currents of social change and
ideology to prosaic politics, which he conveys in elegant prose
studded with vivid character sketches and colorful electoral
set-pieces....The result is an insightful and entertaining analysis
of a watershed era in American politics."—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
"If you don’t think a chronicle of the rise of conservatism
in American politics can be just as entertaining and illuminating
as A Song of Ice and Fire, think again. Perlstein, a local
historian, wraps up his acerbic, thoroughly researched, and
energetic series on the conservative movement with this tome
covering the four years just before Ronald Reagan began his tenure
at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."—Chicago Magazine
“[M]ajestic…Perlstein sees American culture holistically, and his
method is to implant you into the whole of a living
tissue. Reaganland is so mammoth in scope and so
scrupulously agnostic in presentation, each reader will likely find
their own book in there. I walked away grateful for its larger
arc.” —Stephan Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times
"One comes away from this book with a better understanding of how
Carter was so thoroughly defeated....Perlstein casts a broad net,
riffing on everything from Ted Bundy to New York Mayor Ed Koch, but
that is part of the package here; by the end readers have more
insight on the rising tide of conservative politics."—Library
Journal
“A valuable road map that charts how events from 40 years ago
helped lead us to where we are now.” —Kirkus
Reviews (starred review)
"At more than 1,100 pages, Reaganland is the fourth and
final volume of Perlstein’s massive, sweeping history of American
conservatism in the postwar era...Reaganland is terrific, a
work whose characteristic insight and soaring ambition make it a
fitting and resonant conclusion to Perlstein’s astounding
achievement....Perlstein’s rapid-fire style of chronological
narrative is riveting, like the world’s most exciting
microfilm scroll...Perlstein’s epic series shows political history
and cultural history cannot be disentangled." —Jack
Hamilton, Slate
“In Perlstein’s new book, the final volume of his series charting
the ascendancy of the right in America, he traces Reagan’s
political comeback and how he reinvigorated the Republican Party’s
base with his pledge to ‘Make America Great Again.’ Perlstein, an
engaging storyteller, offers a clear guide to the intellectual and
ideological debates of the time.”—Joumana Khatib, The New York
Times (“13 Books to Watch for in August 2020”)
“It’s all here—the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, brother Billy,
the Panama Canal Treaty, California’s Proposition 13 cutting
property taxes, supply side economics, the ‘killer rabbit,’ direct
mail, the Ford Pinto, Ted Kennedy, Three Mile Island, malaise and a
hundred other incidents and stories that defined these tumultuous
years…Reaganland is essentially sociopolitical history,
focusing on the movements and causes that animated public debate so
virulently and the impacts of major social changes, such as women’s
rights, on American life…[A] meticulously researched narrative
history.”—John S. Gardner, The Guardian
“To reduce Perlstein’s works to political biographies would
not be accurate. What he is writing is more of an excavation of the
sediment produced by the media of the time: Especially in recent
works, he uses archival documents sparingly, but reads deeply in
the public record. The books are primarily political history, but
they also take up cultural changes…Perlstein’s works are less
X-rays of the internal structures of the nation at a given time
than an MRI of its nervous system, showing when different regions
of the brain lit up: here, activated by fear, here by sex, here by
joy, here by anger. This is what has made his books grow in
size—Reaganland runs to over 1,000 pages—they resemble reading
several years of news, with the benefit of hindsight. They succeed
when they can make sense of the structure of people’s feelings in a
time of significant social division.”—Patrick Iber, The New
Republic
“Rick Perlstein brings his series on the rise of conservatism
in the U.S. to a conclusion with Reaganland. Examining the
four years before Reagan took office, this volume pinpoints what
led the country to elect the first man to run with the slogan ‘Make
America Great Again,’ and the ruthless political tactics devised to
secure his win that endure to this day.”—Juliet
Helmke, Observer (“5 Most Anticipated Books of August
2020”)
“Perlstein is a great read for both the history and the
narrative.”—John Warner, The Chicago Tribune
"[Perlstein's] books are an epic examination of the political,
societal, and cultural tides that have brought us to today’s
political shores."—Jeff Beer, Fast Company
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