Restless Giant (the United States From Watergate To Bush Vs. Gore)

By (author) Patterson James T.
Short description/annotation:
Attempts to illuminate the road that the US travelled from the dismal days of the mid-1970s through the hotly contested election of 2000. This volume provides an assessment of the 27 years between the resignation of Richard Nixon and the election of George W Bush, in a narrative that weaves together social, cultural and political developments.
Description:
James Patterson''s Bancroft Prize-winning Grand Expectations, the penultimate volume in the Oxford History of the United States, was hailed by The New York Times as "a spirited, sprawling narrative of American life" and by The Wall Street Journal as "a tour de force." Now, in the final chronological volume of this acclaimed series, Patterson again offers an authoritative and vibrant history of a turbulent period in American life. Restless Giant provides a crisp, concise assessment of the twenty-seven years between the resignation of Richard Nixon and the election of George W. Bush, in a sweeping narrative that seamlessly weaves together social, cultural, political, economic, and international developments. We meet the era''s many memorable figures--most notably, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton--and explore the "culture wars" where liberals and conservatives, including a resurgent Religious Right, appeared to cut the country in two. Indeed, Reagan helped to usher in a widespread conservative revolution, but even as the Right was ascendant politically, it did not succeed in reversing more liberal trends. Patterson describes how, when the Cold War finally ended, Americans faced bewildering new developments around the world and discovered--in Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq--that it was far from easy to direct the outcome of global events. In exploring a wide range of cultural, social, and economic concerns, Patterson shows how the persistence of racial tensions, high divorce rates, alarm over crime, and urban decay all led many writers to portray this era as one of decline. But Restless Giant offers a more positive perspective, arguing that our often unmet expectations caused many of us to view the era negatively, when in fact we were in many ways better off than we thought. By 2000, most Americans lived more comfortably than they had in the 1970s, and though bigotry and discrimination were far from extinct, a powerful rights consciousness insured that these were less pervasive in American life than at any time in the past. With insightful analyses and engaging prose, Restless Giant captures this period of American history in a way that no other book has, illuminating the road that the United States traveled from the dismal days of the mid-1970s through the hotly contested election of 2000.
Review quote:
"Jim Patterson has done it again! Restless Giantis a worthy successor to his prize-winning Grand Expectations. Patterson writes with flair, an admirable sense of balance, and complete command of his sources. He covers the full gamut of American life; politics, economics, international affairs, race, sex, and the culture wars all get their due. Anyone wishing to understand modern America would do well to begin with this book."--Michael J. Klarman, author of the Bancroft Prize-winning From Jim Crow to Civil Rights
Biographical note:
James T. Patterson is Ford Foundation Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. One of the most highly respected historians of contemporary America, he is the author of Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974, which won a Bancroft Prize, and Brown v Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy.
Review quote: previous edition:
"First-rate history by a first-rate historian....A splendid book that will come to be regarded as indispensable to everyone who cares about the history of this country."--Charles Peters, The New York Times Book Review "This splendid and readab