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Cargando... Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008 original; edición 2008)por Rick Perlstein
Información de la obraNixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America por Rick Perlstein (2008)
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Given the present day situation in the US, many are starting to look back, with some fondness, to the 60's. One hears of critics speaking of the 1960's as one of the golden ages of film, music, etc. However, this is not true in the daily civic life. Rick Perlstein has managed to capture some of the rage and anger of the period. This is the age of the civil rights movement, the start of the feminist movement and the student protest over the war in Vietnam. Into this maelstrom comes Richard Nixon. Nixon is not only a problem, we also see the rise of young staffers and individuals who, for better or worse, effect the course of American History in the early 21st century. This is a well written book that gives understanding to what happened and how those events are still with us today. Very impressionistic history. You need to have some basic knowledge of the events, because Perlstein skips over many of them in favor of the little details. (For example, he won't generally say who won each election or primary.) He goes so far as to read through daily newspapers, page by page giving each story. You do get a certain sense for the time, although from a biased perspective. Perlstein has a strong thesis, but he often leaves it implicit, in the choice of topics he focuses on. I'd rather he always argued explicitly. Whew, what a tome! Nixonland is a factual, insightful book about the turbulent 1960's and the divisiveness that arose in the politics in the United States. I was fascinated by Nixon's political career, the way he was able to set an "us against them" tone to his rhetoric, how his lust for power led to the inevitable and infamous Watergate, and how he felt victimized throughout his presidency. A great read.
Perlstein's Nixon is a cartoon figure, not in the mode of Herblock, whose caricatures, while vicious, were nonetheless original and uncomfortably recognizable to Nixon’s friends, but plastic, one-dimensional, and unrecognizable except to the most fervid of Nixon’s enemies. Relying largely on the psycho-babble of Fawn Brodie, the partisan fury of Leonard Lurie, and the genteel animus of Richard Reeves, Perlstein left no Nixonphobic screed untapped in the process of liming his portrait of Nixon as psychotic. And when he couldn’t find a previously published damning story to lift, he made it up, as in his phony reconstruction of Nixon’s meeting with the Southern Republican state chairmen in June of 1968. A reader expecting to learn something new (or true) about the issues that roiled the public discourse in the 1960s is bound to be disappointed. Perlstein regurgitates the standard New Left line on the war in Vietnam . . . ; apes Todd Gitlin’s revisionist line on the history of the New Left . . . ; and concocts an elaborate Nixonian plot to thwart the integration of Southern schools as a payoff to Strom Thurmond while ignoring entirely the story (best told by Ray Price) of how those schools were, in fact, integrated without violence during Nixon’s first term. . . . Nixonland is not history; it is polemics. Perlstein is out to poke Republicans (and conservatives) in the eye and “history” is his stick. He shapes it to suit his purpose and wields it to achieve a political objective. No Perlstein “fact” can be relied upon as true, no event he relates can be assumed to be fairly discussed, and no grand idea advanced by him can be taken seriously. But we could do worse than borrow Nixon's words on taking office in January 1969, when he said that his country suffered "from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading." Funnily enough, that sounds like a pretty good description of Perlstein's book. PremiosDistincionesListas de sobresalientes
Referencias a esta obra en fuentes externas. Wikipedia en inglés (15)An account of the thirth-seventh presidency sets Nixon's administration against a backdrop of the tumultuous civil rights movement while offering insight into how key events in the 1960s set the stage for today's political divides. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)973.924History and Geography North America United States 1901- Eisenhower Through Clinton Administrations Richard NixonClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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Perlstein has previously published volumes on Eisenhower, Goldwater, and Reagan. He will, in all probability, continue his uninspired, shallow chronicles of Republican politicians with a book on Donald Trump. Those of us who have read the preceding books will avoid it: there are far too many legitimate analyses and critiques of Trump, or Nixon, to waste time with fluff.
Not recommended. ( )