Before the Storm - by Rick Perlstein (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From a bestselling historian and journalist, a whirlwind account of how Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential belly flop shaped the political world we know now.

"A detailed and dramatic narrative of the rise of the modern right...It's an amazing story, and Perlstein, a man of the left, does it justice." --William Kristol, New York Times Book Review

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History

As the 1950s drew to a close, Americans were confident that impassioned political conflict was a thing of the past. Then, conservatives launched an uprising to eviscerate the centrist consensus. They were determined to see Barry Goldwater--a rich, handsome Arizona Republican who scorned the federal bureaucracy, reviled negotiations with the Communist enemy, and despised liberals on sight--elected president in 1964. Lyndon Johnson trounced him. Within two years, the notion of America as a "consensus" society was in tatters. Two decades later, Ronald Reagan was president. By the next decade, Goldwater's ideas had been adopted by Republicans and Democrats alike.

In this engrossing narrative, Rick Perlstein argues that the 1964 election marked a key shift in US politics, the aftershocks of which we're still feeling today.

Review Quotes

"Before the Storm is smart and lively, and the description is delightfully thick...The point of Rick Perlstein's animated re-creation of the Goldwater campaign is that Barry Goldwater was as much a man of the nineteen-sixties as Abbie Hoffman or Malcolm X, and, what's more, his shadow looms a good deal larger than theirs. It's not only that more politicians today sound like Goldwater than like Tom Hayden. More politicians today sound like Goldwater than like Lyndon Johnson."--Louis Menand, The New Yorker

"Before the Storm is told dazzlingly. Perlstein re-creates the social and cultural milieu that gave rise to the conservative movement with earned authority and easy patience...Insightful, gracefully written, well-paced and sympathetic to its central characters' motivations."--Newsday

"Although conservative Republicans suffered a humiliating defeat in 1964, the principles they had embraced and the organization they had built endured, soon to bring them local, state and then national victories. Perlstein tells this story with energy and insight, and in lively prose."--Gary Gerstle, Dissent

"Anyone who has read Perlstein's wonderfully colorful account of the Goldwa­ter nomination and his subsequent defeat in November 1964 will be sorry that the book stops there...Let us hope that Perlstein is already at work on another book about it all."--National Review

"Combining prodigious research with journalistic flair, Rick Perlstein...has produced a detailed and dramatic narrative of the rise of the modern right...It's an amazing story, and Perlstein, a man of the left, does it justice."--William Kristol, The New York Times Book Review

"Comprehensive and compelling...The heart of Perlstein's lengthy book is his colorful account of the intellectual giants, the canny political operatives, and the far-out fellow travelers in the conservative cause."--Business Week

"Daring, virtuosic writing, and encyclopedic mastery make...[Before the Storm] one of the most stylish, riveting achievements in narrative history to appear in years...An exciting volume, an outstanding debut. It goes beyond conservatism. It ups the ante on what popular history can, and should, do."--The Village Voice

"Finally, a gifted writer has told the full story of the difficult birth and exuber­ant adolescence of the conservative movement that went on to transform American politics. Rick Perlstein's indispensable history is stuffed with wit, learning, and drama. After reading it, you will never think of the 1960s in the same way again."--Michael Kazin, author of What It Took to Win

"Occasionally a book comes along which causes historians to rethink an entire era. Rick Perlstein's remarkable Before the Storm is such an achievement: ele­gantly written, copiously researched, brimming with fresh anecdotes. Perlstein illuminates how conservatism erupted into a mass political movement while the academic scholars and media pundits were embracing Great Society Liberal­ism and Counterculture Despair. A truly landmark study."--Douglas Brinkley, author of Silent Spring Revolution

"Offer[s] much background on the remarkable fact of contemporary politics: most of our major political institutions...are today owned by the right, al­ though, issue by issue, the causes of the right are unpopular...Perlstein has a nose for pungent detail. It is hard to imagine that he has missed any interesting or delicious fact about Goldwater or his circle of devotees."--Boston Review

"One of the finest studies of the American right to appear since the days of Hof­stadter. Read it and understand where the mad public faiths of our own day came from."--Thomas Frank, author of The People, No

"Perlstein is such a great storyteller--one of the most enjoyable historians I've ever read."--The Nation

"Perlstein retells this story with energy and skill...His vibrant, detailed nar­rative moves swiftly and brings a large cast to life."--Sam Tanenhaus, The New Republic

"Perlstein's narrative...is never less than compelling, brilliantly researched and reported."--The Hartford Courant

"Writing with the authority of an academic historian and the dash of a jour­nalist, Mr. Perlstein manages to break free of the partisan idees rerues and doctrinal laziness that typify so much writing on recent history. There is something independent, un-bought-out and, in the best sense, radical about this book."--Christopher Caldwell, The New York Observer

About the Author

Rick Perlstein is the bestselling author of Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. His reviews, reporting, and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He lives in Chicago.