A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism
Conservatism emerging as a political force to be reckoned with  very well may be the most enduring counterculture movement of  the Sixties. Schoenwald (humanities, Stanford) offers a  thoroughly researched investigation of the love/hate  relationship between mainstream Republican conservatism and  extremist, rabid anti-Communist factions like the John Birch  Society and how they merged in 1964 to nominate the conservative  Arizona senator Barry Goldwater as the Republican Presidential  candidate. While Goldwater proved to be the wrong man at the  wrong time, Schoenwald demonstrates that Ronald Reagan was the  right man at the right time just two years later when he was  "surprisingly" elected governor of California. The conservative  movement surpassed liberalism as the politics of choice for  voters when its leaders and grass-roots workers discovered the  limits of ideology, the importance of organization, and the  necessity of getting out the vote. Although not as entertaining  as Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the  Unmaking of the American Consensus (LJ 2/15/01), Schoenwald's is  an excellent account of the spread of conservatism from 1957 to  1972. His study is especially strong in revealing the internal  workings of the many splinter groups that the movement comprised  during its formative years. Strongly recommended for larger  public and academic collections. Karl Helicher, Upper Merion  Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PACopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.