Before the Storm - by Rick Perlstein (Paperback)

About the Book

In an astute and surprising history of the 1960s as the cradle of the conservative movement, Perlstein's gutsy narrative history profiles the rise of Barry Goldwater, the rich, handsome Arizona Republican who scorned the federal bureaucracy and despised liberals on sight.16 pp. of photos.

Book Synopsis

"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)

Before the Storm begins at the tail end of the 1950s, with America affluent, confident, and convinced that political ideology was a thing of the past.

But when John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, conservatives--editor William F. Buckley Jr., John Birch Society leader Robert Welch, and thousands of students--formed a movement to challenge the center-left consensus. They chose as their hero Barry Goldwater--a rich, handsome Arizona Republican who scorned the federal bureaucracy, reviled détente, despised liberals on sight--and grew determined to see him elected President.

Goldwater was trounced by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But by the campaign's end the consensus found itself squeezed from the left and the right; and two decades later, the conservatives had elected Ronald Reagan as President and Goldwater's ideas had been adopted by Republicans and Democrats alike.

The story of the rise of conservatism during a liberal era has never been told, and Rick Perlstein's gutsy narrative history is full of portraits of figures from Nelson Rockefeller to Bill Moyers. Perlstein argues that the 1964 election led to a key shift in U.S. politics--from concerns over threats from abroad to concerns about disorder at home; from campaigns plotted in back rooms to those staged for television.

Review Quotes

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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 New York Observer, The New Republic, The Washington Post, London Review of Books, Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, and The New Yorker. He has received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for independent scholars. He lives in Chicago.