The Inheritance

In a chronicle of three generations of three working-class families, award-winning journalist Samuel G. Freedman tells the human story of the political transformation of twentieth-century America - the rise and fall of FDR's New Deal coalition and its displacement by the new conservatism of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. This is the single most important political phenomenon of our times. Freedman has selected three families who are at once singular and broadly representative. They are families who reached this country just as the century was beginning and struggled as blacksmiths and domestics and butchers and plumbers to gain a foothold. They are families who acted on their beliefs not only by voting but also by organizing neighborhoods and leading union chapters, canvassing precincts and watching polls and marching in torch-light parades. These families were pillars of the Democratic coalition that largely led America from 1932 until 1968 - community activists, trade unionists, machine politicians, with loyalties based on religion, ethnicity, and social class. These families equally embody the forces that shifted the majority into Republican hands for all but four years between 1968 and 1992 - grievances about taxes, crime, and reverse discrimination; the rise of suburbia and a shift to a new political machine based on private financing for development rather than public works. They are individuals who shifted from New Deal Democrats to Reagan Republicans to a mixture of GOP stalwarts, hesitant Clinton backers, and political dropouts. And in so doing, they carried with them a nation's destiny. The Inheritance will change our understanding of how and why America selects its leaders.

Publishers Weekly

Freedmana former New York Times reporter and author of two reportorial gems, Small Victories (focusing on an innovative Manhattan teacher) and Upon This Rock (about a popular black church in Brooklyn)here turns to a broader canvas with an impressive grasp of detail and a feeling for his subject that, in this election year, should finally win him the wider audience his earlier books also deserved. Combining sociology with political science and a good deal of old-fashioned city-room legwork, Freedman follows three generations of three very different working-class immigrant families as they progress from being FDR Democrats to Gingrich-era activist Republicans. The approach may remind some of Anthony Lucas's Pulitzer Prize-winning Common Ground, but this is a more immediate, more personal account, one that only rarely steps back from its close-ups of the families to present a broader picture. The result is a series of unforgettable portraits and a vividly individual history of America in the second half of the 20th century. One family is Irish, another Italian. Both of them settled in New York City or its environs. The third is Polish and settled in Baltimore. With its emphasis on trade unions and politics on the precinct level, and its underlying theme that the reality of the New Deal is being forgotten by both parties, this is a skillful and artful account of how we got where we are. (Sept.)

Samuel G. Freedman is the author of five books, including Jew vs. Jew and Upon This Rock. He is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a regular contributor to The New York Times, among other publications.