Before the Storm
Subtitle: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Published: April 15, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 688
ISBN-13: 9780809028580
Subjects: History: American; History; History - General History; History & Theory - General; United States - 20th Century; Political Science / History & Theory
First sentence: Imagine you lived in a town of twenty, or fifty, or one hundred thousand souls-in Indiana, perhaps, or Illinois, or Missouri, or Tennessee-with a colonnaded red-brick city hall at its center, a Main Street running its breadth, avenues rimmed with modest bungalows and named for trees and exotic heroes and local luminaries, interrupted at intervals by high-steepled churches.
Description: Tells the story of the rise of the conservative movement in the liberal 1960s.  The figure at the heart of the story is Barry Goldwater, the handsome renegade Republican from Arizona who loathed the federal government, despised liberals on sight, and mocked "peaceful coexistence" with the USSR. Perlstein's narrative also examines the whole world of conservatives and their antagonists during the 1960s, including William F. Buckley, Nelson Rockefeller, and Bill Moyers.