Restless Giant

Starred review from September 1, 2005
The Brown University historian seamlessly melds the complexities of politics, economics, society and culture into a vibrant and accessible account of late twentieth century America. Patterson's analyses of standard historical fare, interwoven with nuanced observations on diverse issues such as family life, the personal computer revolution, the media and gay activism give this book its singular dynamism. Picking up where his last volume, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974, left off, Patterson opens with Richard Nixon's resignation and plunges into a detailed discussion of "the nation's number one problem," race. Contemporary commentators viewed racial tensions, along with relaxed sexual mores, agitation for women's rights and burgeoning consumerism as symptomatic of the country's "moral decline," spurring organizations like Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority to advocate "pro-life, pro-family pro-morality, pro-American" views. By the late 1990s, media-exaggerated accounts of these "culture wars," had abated, Patterson says. Pop culture icons from Bill Cosby to Madonna and Jerry Seinfeld also populate these pages, but, predictably, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton tower over all. Patterson credits Reagan with "facilitating" the end of the Cold War, but diplomatically sidesteps whether he or Mikhail Gorbachev deserve the ultimate accolades. Although international conflicts distracted Clinton from the domestic policy-making he preferred, a sexual "tryst" led to his impeachment, threatening the "transcendent position in United States history" he sought. The author also touches on terrorism, beginning with the Iranian hostage crisis and culminating in the American intelligence community's knowledge that, by late 1998, radical Muslim terrorists "were considering... hijacking commercial airliners and crashing them into buildings." Rich in period details from the somber to frivolous, this is an invaluable guide to the end of an era.

August 15, 2005
Continuing where he ended his prior contribution to the series (G"rand Expectations: The United States, 1945 -1974"), Patterson (history, Brown Univ.) again combines narrative and analysis in his assessment of an important era in U.S. history. The result is a good survey of the political, economic, foreign policy, social, and cultural trends and events during the presidencies of Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Naturally, as the book approaches its end, Patterson is brushing up so close to the present that his history turns to mere summary -always a problem when writing near to the time period. Had David Kennedy written "Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929 -1945" -his contribution to Oxford's notable multivolume series -in 1950 instead of 1999, it would likely have been forgotten instead of earning a Pulitzer Prize. Nonetheless, Patterson is a fine historian, and even his summary is as good as we are liable to get until distance gives later historians the space they will need to begin work on the more recent years covered here. For all libraries. -Robert F. Nardini, Chichester, NH

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