America's Right Turn: From Nixon to Clinton

In America's Right Turn historian William Berman examines the political, cultural, and economic contexts in which Republican conservatives operated and explores the crisis of the liberal welfare state against the background of presidential politics. Berman demonstrates the key roles played by conservative populism and the conservative backlash to the rights revolution in the collapse of Democratic hegemony. But most importantly, he shows how conservative politics became allied with conservative economics—an alliance forged with singular success during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In this new edition, Berman discusses the initial failure of the Clinton administration to establish a viable political alternative to the GOP. Berman also shows how Clinton won reelection in l996 by moving steadily to the center, even to the extent of co-opting the Republican agenda, while defending a number of key Democratic programs.

The Johns Hopkins University Press

"Clearly advances discussion of the political transformations from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Berman is especially helpful in untangling the interaction of economic change, economic policy making and electoral politics." -- Journal of American History

Booknews

Berman attributes the shift to a fracture of the left over the Vietnam War, the inflation of the 1970s, opposition to the rights revolution, and the globalization of the economy as well as to purely ideological changes or belief in a mystical Free Market. He has corrected the 1994 edition, added a chapter on the Clinton administration, and updated the bibliography. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

William C. Berman is professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration and William Fulbright and the Vietnam War: The Dissent of a Political Realist.