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I'm a history professor at the University of Mississippi and I've been a political junkie for a long time. I really began following politics during the 1988 presidential election and I vividly remember reading about the race in the newspaper every morning and then watching the evening news coverage each night. Thus, it seemed like the perfect topic for my second book. It was really fascinating to see the similarities and differences between my memories and the sources from the time.
Both major political parties formed much bigger ideological tents during most of the post-World War II period than they do today.
Kabaservice’s book is fascinating because it depicts a time and place in the 1960s when the Republican Party was extremely heterogenous and featured large and politically potent moderate and liberal wings. Geographically, the Party of Lincoln still held great sway in its original base in New England and the Midwest. As a result, centrists like New York’s Nelson Rockefeller, Michigan’s George Romney, and Massachusetts’ Ed Brooke were power brokers in the GOP of that era.
Kabaservice also shows how conservatives ascended to power as the liberal and moderate wings gradually declined and disappeared by the early 21st century, giving us the contemporary Republican Party.
As the 2012 elections approach, the Republican Party is rocketing rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threaten to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mount primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appear to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise are dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seems, has suddenly become a party of ideological purity.
Except this development is not new at all. In Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice reveals that the moderate Republicans' downfall began not with the rise of…
I'm a history professor at the University of Mississippi and I've been a political junkie for a long time. I really began following politics during the 1988 presidential election and I vividly remember reading about the race in the newspaper every morning and then watching the evening news coverage each night. Thus, it seemed like the perfect topic for my second book. It was really fascinating to see the similarities and differences between my memories and the sources from the time.
The 1988 election was the last contest in which the three broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) and the major mainstream newspapers like The New York Times dominated political coverage.
Over the next three decades, a more diverse media environment emerged where cable channels, talk radio and other sources would play a central role. Rosenwald lays out the rise of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk radio hosts in the 1990s and how they helped shape the modern Republican Party and the more partisan and tribalized political climate of the early 21st century.
The cocreator of the Washington Post's "Made by History" blog reveals how the rise of conservative talk radio gave us a Republican Party incapable of governing and paved the way for Donald Trump.
America's long road to the Trump presidency began on August 1, 1988, when, desperate for content to save AM radio, top media executives stumbled on a new format that would turn the political world upside down. They little imagined that in the coming years their brainchild would polarize the country and make it nearly impossible to govern. Rush Limbaugh, an enormously talented former disc jockey-opinionated, brash, and…
I'm a history professor at the University of Mississippi and I've been a political junkie for a long time. I really began following politics during the 1988 presidential election and I vividly remember reading about the race in the newspaper every morning and then watching the evening news coverage each night. Thus, it seemed like the perfect topic for my second book. It was really fascinating to see the similarities and differences between my memories and the sources from the time.
Williams’ book is an excellent look at an earlier election with many similarities to 1988.
As opposed to today’s elections where candidates work to motivate their bases, Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican Gerald Ford worked to build broad electoral coalitions in 1976. They had to concern themselves with both liberal and conservative constituencies within their own parties.
In the end, Carter was able to unite the old New Deal coalition for one last hurrah while Ford nearly provided a last gasp for traditional establishment conservatism. By 1988, the two parties were not the same big tents they were in 1976 but still featured much greater ideological diversity than they do today.
From where we stand now, the election of 1976 can look like an alternate reality: southern white evangelicals united with African Americans, northern Catholics, and Jews in support of a Democratic presidential candidate; the Republican candidate, a social moderate whose wife proudly proclaimed her support for Roe v. Wade, was able to win over Great Plains farmers as well as cultural liberals in Oregon, California, Connecticut, and New Jersey - even as he lost Ohio, Texas, and nearly the entire South. The Election of the Evangelical offers an unprecedented, behind-the-headlines analysis of this now almost unimaginable political moment, which proved…
I'm a history professor at the University of Mississippi and I've been a political junkie for a long time. I really began following politics during the 1988 presidential election and I vividly remember reading about the race in the newspaper every morning and then watching the evening news coverage each night. Thus, it seemed like the perfect topic for my second book. It was really fascinating to see the similarities and differences between my memories and the sources from the time.
This book is interesting because it shows how a traditional New Deal/Great Society liberal like Vice President Mondale adapted to the changing politics of the 1970s and 1980s.
To a certain extent, he saw how some Democratic policies needed to be reformed for the new circumstances of a more conservative era. During his 1984 run for the president, he famously proposed raising taxes to combat the Reagan-era deficits.
Though this proposal is recalled as a misguided attempt to campaign as a conventional progressive, Mondale was trying to show that Democrats could be responsible fiscal stewards. Four years later, Dukakis continued this effort through his own repeated mentions of the multiple budgets he balanced while governor of Massachusetts.
What does Walter Mondale's career reveal about the dilemma of the modern Democtratic party and the crisis of postwar American liberalism? Steven M. Gillon 's answer is that Mondale's frustration as Jimmy Carter's vice president and his failure to unseat the immensely popular President Reagan in 1984 reveal the beleaguered state of a party torn apart by generational and ideological disputes. The Democrats' Dilemma begins with Mondale's early career in Minnesota politics, from his involvement with Hubert Humphrey to his election to the United States Senate in 1964. Like many liberals of his generation, Mondale traveled to Washington hopeful that…
Much laughter is born out of sadness. Humor can be a way to cope or even reinvent our realities in ways that bring relief—and release. There's a misconception that “serious literature” should be humorless; crack a smile and you’re a fraud. However, the worlds and characters that emerge from this way of thinking do not ring true to me. Who among us hasn’t joked to help deal with sorrow? Or to satirize the outrageous? Or simply because life--however brutal—is also sometimes funny? The more a writer allows laughter to intermingle with tears, the more I believe in the story, and the more I enjoy it. That is why I wrote a “funny-sad” novel, The Australian.
Alice, Corvus, and Annabel, children without mothers, traverse air-conditioned buildings and desert landscapes, strewn with symbols and signs of mortality—from the preservation of those teetering on the brink of death at a nursing home to a wildlife museum full of taxidermies; and these teenagers are orbited by agitated, confused adults who seem wholly unaware of the strangeness—and messages—defining their lives. Joy Williams is a master at dark humor in literary fiction, and The Quick and the Dead is one of her finest achievements.
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • From one of our most heralded writers comes the “poetic, disturbing, yet very funny” (The Washington Post Book World) life-and-death adventures of three misfit teenagers in the American desert.
Alice, Corvus, and Annabel, each a motherless child, are an unlikely circle of friends. One filled with convictions, another with loss, the third with a worldly pragmatism, they traverse an air-conditioned landscape eccentric with signs and portents—from the preservation of the living dead in a nursing home to the presentation of the dead as living in a wildlife museum—accompanied by restless, confounded adults.
I developed a strong interest in current events, especially politics, in high school. What the government does, or does not do, struck me as a vital piece of the puzzle in trying to explain why things are the way they are. That soon led, however, to seeing how the past continues to influence the present. No decade is more important than the 1960s for understanding our current political climate.
Lassiter presents a nuanced examination of how social and political conflicts in Richmond, Atlanta, and Charlotte during enabled Richard Nixon and other Republicans to resurrect the GOP from its 1964 electoral disaster through reliance, not on a “southern strategy,” as many pundits have long claimed, but rather on a suburban strategy that involved the complex interplay of race, class, and other factors.
The messages that enabled the GOP to gain traction in the suburban South, Lassiter emphasizes, worked across the nation. The South was not as different as many observers have long claimed. Lassiter also chronicles how these conflicts reshaped the Democratic Party in the South, as by the early 1970s more moderate figures such Jimmy Carter had supplanted the staunch segregationists of decades past.
Suburban sprawl transformed the political culture of the American South as much as the civil rights movement did during the second half of the twentieth century. The Silent Majority provides the first regionwide account of the suburbanization of the South from the perspective of corporate leaders, political activists, and especially of the ordinary families who lived in booming Sunbelt metropolises such as Atlanta, Charlotte, and Richmond. Matthew Lassiter examines crucial battles over racial integration, court-ordered busing, and housing segregation to explain how the South moved from the era of Jim Crow fully into the mainstream of national currents. During the…
I spent my adolescence reading young adult novels that featured characters who were nothing like me, and yearned to read about characters who shared my struggle in mediating my community’s cultural expectations as a first-generation Australia. This is the inspiration for writing own voices stories as these are the books I wished I’d been able to read. I draw on my Bosnian-Muslim cultural heritage to write own voices stories for young people, who like me, are searching to mediate their identity and take pride in their diverse culture. Own voices books are an opportunity to learn and celebrate culture and diversity, and to show young people that they are not alone in the world.
A stunning novel that represents the true beating heart of Australia I grew up with cultures that represent all the different waves of migration in Australia.
Divaroren has created such distinct voices for each of her characters which is a feat as each perspective is written in first person, from seven-year-old Sam who is terrorised by his father, to 70-year-old Mr. Bailey who is a Vietnam vet and struggling with the changing face of Australia.
I fell in love with the characters and loved that there was so much reality and heart, but most importantly hope in this beautiful novel that celebrates multiculturalism and belonging.
'Living on Hope Street is a big-hearted, compassionate work. Divaroren is a ferociously good storyteller and every character breathes life, every character convinces. This book is an absolute joy to read.' CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS" We all love someone. We all fear something. Sometimes they live right next door - or even closer. Kane will do everything he can to save his mother and his little brother Sam from the violence of his father, even if it means becoming a monster himself. Mrs Aslan will protect the boys no matter what - even though her own family is in pieces. Ada wants…
My life, in particular, has been a series of challenges to overcome, from an attempted kidnapping at age eight to surviving breast cancer (twice!) before the age of forty-five. I believe in a world of equal opportunity, but I know the pursuit of happiness takes hard work. As a general contractor in the male-dominated construction industry, I’m well aware of gender biases in our world and the dedication it takes to overcome them. However, the struggle empowers us all, and even small victories inspire us to overcome adversity. Life is a survival story, and art imitates life. So I crave, read, and write novels starring empowered women.
I love a book rich with flawed characters; this one is full of them. Perrotta’s peek into the mundane life of a stay-at-home mother at war with her lot in life is delicious. Sarah once coined herself a feminist, and now, she’s wiping noses. It’s a struggle many mothers of little children face, and while most don’t go to the lengths Perrotta’s characters explore, it’s a valiant example of losing oneself for the sake of a higher calling: motherhood.
I first read this book at graduate school, with two babies at home. Perrotta taught me that exploring the human condition is necessary for connecting with readers. I’ve received many letters from readers citing that they connected with Veronica on the pages of Trespassing, and that’s the best accolade.
Unexpectedly suspenseful, but written with all the fluency and dark humor of Tom Perrotta's The Wishbones and Joe College, Little Children exposes the adult dramas unfolding amidst the swingsets and slides of an ordinary American playground.
Tom Perrotta's thirty-ish parents of young children are a varied and surprising bunch. There's Todd, the handsome stay-at-home dad dubbed "The Prom King" by the moms of the playground; Sarah, a lapsed feminist with a bisexual past, who seems to have stumbled into a traditional marriage; Richard, Sarah's husband, who has found himself more and more involved with a fantasy life on the internet…
In second grade my teacher told me I should be a writer—I haven’t wavered in my path since. I was a voracious reader as a child and regularly snatched books off my mom’s night table. My love for flawed characters grew with each book I devoured. I felt a connection with these characters, which fueled my dream to become a writer. When I was twenty-one years old and studying writing, I wrote in my journal, “I want to write books that make people cry.” I love to explore the gray areas in life, and I’m honored that readers have told me my books do make them cry (and laugh).
I love smart thrillers like The Practice of Deceit—thrillers that keep me turning the pages even if my alarm is going off early the next morning; thrillers that don’t rely on violence to propel the story forward but rather on interesting, richly drawn, complex characters who are not portrayed in black and white.
Charming bachelor Eric Lavender, a psychotherapist, falls for Colleen O’Brien Golden, a lawyer, but when a conflict of interest with Colleen’s client implodes Eric’s idyllic suburban life as a husband and father to an adorable stepdaughter and a newborn, he learns the dark truth about Colleen’s past. Eric’s flaw is, to me, the one that makes a character most sympathetic—being blinded by love and desire. I love that this book is in the male point of view, and it’s done so well that when Colleen tries to destroy Eric, it is a gut punch.
This smart psychological thriller about a therapist who marries the wrong woman is “a lot of wicked fun” (Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered).
When Eric Lavender meets the attorney Colleen O’Brien Golden, his position as one of Manhattan’s chic psychotherapists and most eligible bachelors suddenly loses its appeal. The sexy, stylish Colleen lures him to live with her and her young daughter in the exclusive suburb of Scarsdale. To his amazement, Eric is besotted and soon settles into the unexpected bliss of marriage and domesticity with their new baby and his loving stepdaughter. He even becomes a local hero…
I’m a writer, forever tap-tap-tapping away on my computer, looking to create that lyrical rhythm on the page that I feel in my heart. I’m also usually singing, whether it’s made up ditties to my dogs, 80s indie pop, or Broadway showtimes. Bottom line, I’m a storyteller, and nothing thrills me as much as a great tale well told, either on the page, on the stage, or around a table. Here are a few stories I’ve loved along the way that include a nod to Broadway, another love of mine long before I was hired to write the book for Legally Blonde the Musical.
I read that Matt Weiner wouldn’t have had the courage to write Mad Men if he’d read this before he worked on the series.
Revolutionary Road is set in the world of New York advertising during the martini lunch era, and it’s one of my favorite books of all time. It doesn’t exactly have that Singin’ in the Rain optimism, but it’s darkly hilarious. The opening scene is literary perfection, set at the dress rehearsal for the Laurel Players.
Yates masterfully captures that Waiting for Guffman sincerity (and inherent comedy) of community theater, and the novel sets the stage for the deeply human tale of longing. It is deeply American and deeply perfect.
Hailed as a masterpiece from its first publication, Revolutionary Road is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright young couple who are bored by the banalities of suburban life and long to be extraordinary. With heartbreaking compassion and clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April's decision to change their lives for the better leads to betrayal and tragedy.
