The TV Campaign
The morning after the first televised debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush, I awoke to the voice of an earnestly boyish reporter on National Public Radio proclaiming that at long last America has...
View ArticleAs Reviewed on Amazon
I first delved into the reviews posted by readers on Amazon.com for utilitarian reasons. I will soon be publishing a serious nonfiction book; I wanted to know what kind of attention such a book could...
View ArticleThe Historical Present
The phone call made me nervous. I'd never been offered an all-expense-paid press junket before. Wasn't this the sort of thing you'd expect from a petroleum conglomerate, sponsoring a conference on...
View ArticlePatriot Act?
Earlier this month, Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark gave the keynote address at the second annual convention of Military Reporters and Editors (MRE), the professional organization for...
View ArticleConviction Politics
It may be a bit much to begin my remarks by putting pressure, like a deconstructionist, on a single word -- a word that may have been just a throwaway -- but I'll take the risk. Near the beginning of...
View ArticleLook Back in Anger
Democrats have their majority in the House, and that's cause for celebration. But as of this writing several House races are still listed as "too close to call." The Senate has also changed hands --...
View ArticleA FORGOTTEN LIBERAL ARIA.
Doing my research for Nixonland, I was dismayed to learn to that two of the greatest Democratic speeches are nowhere to be found across the entire howling wilderness of the Internet.The first was...
View Article"Then No One Would Be a Democrat Anymore"
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt of Rick Perstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, out May 15 from Scribner. Perlstein joins us this week as a contributor...
View ArticleLOUISIANA REPRESENTS.
Some of you might have read about the Democrats' success this past weekend in winning Louisiana's formerly Republican 6th Congressional District. And what kind of district is the Fightin' 6th? I just...
View ArticleA Liberal Shock Doctrine
Progressive political change in American history is rarely incremental. With important exceptions, most of the reforms that have advanced our nation's status as a modern, liberalizing social democracy...
View ArticleThe Truths That Television Can Tell
I noticed it only months later. It certainly wasn't intentional. I chose several dozen photographs to illustrate my book Nixonland, pretty much a random selection of galvanizing images illustrating the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The 1960s, Refracted
One summer over 15 years ago, three books crossed my horizon at exactly the same time. One was Greg Tate's Flyboy in the Buttermilk. The second was Stanley Crouch's Notes of a Hanging Judge. The third...
View ArticleSolidarity Squandered
The day began in a dull civic deadness. It was an election day, the second Tuesday in September, in one of the world's most political cities. The weather was perfect: a cloudless Indian-summer day. The...
View ArticleSolidarity Squandered
The day began in a dull civic deadness. It was an election day, the second Tuesday in September, in one of the world's most political cities. The weather was perfect: a cloudless Indian-summer day. The...
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