A review by tsharris
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein

5.0

Superb political and cultural history of how American politics came to be the way it remains: two camps utterly convinced that the other means to destroy America. Perlstein manages to capture the resentments that animated the "silent majority" not unsympathetically, while meticulously tracing the ways in which Nixon exploited those resentments. The liberal establishment also looks horrendous, feckless, out of touch, completely incapable of understanding the resentments that Nixon was able to draw upon in his campaigns. It was depressing to see although the faces have changed, politicians continue to read from the scripts first written during this period.