★ 12/01/2018
Based on a college class Kruse and Zelizer (both history, Princeton Univ.) cocreated, this book is a concise, riveting, and carefully argued chronicle of the last four decades of American history, from Watergate through President Donald Trump's first year in office, with the September 11 attacks as a pivotal moment. Many of the recent events described throughout have both a vague familiarity and, in the authors' expert hands, a surprising newness. The book draws its structure and title from four dividing lines in American society: politics, economy, race, gender, and sexuality. Making judicious use of primary and secondary sources, the authors argue persuasively that changes in the way Americans communicate and receive news, along with other broad trends, have made those divisions more pronounced and deep seated. Kruse and Zelizer effectively summarize massive social movements and developments—e.g., the rise of the religious right or the growth of social media—in a few pages. They rightly dwell at more length on the historic 2016 presidential election and its aftermath. VERDICT This highly readable, compelling book should be required reading for all Americans of voting age.—Christopher Myers, Lake Oswego P.L., OR
11/26/2018One Nation Under God ) and Zelizer (The Fierce Urgency of Now ), both Princeton history professors, examine American politics starting in 1974, a watershed year marked by Nixon’s resignation, through to the present. The bedrock of the text is a readable, well-paced history that depicts in chronological order major events of the four decades, including the AIDS epidemic, the Iran-Contra affair, the rise of the Tea Party, and the passage of the Affordable Care Act. This provides fodder for an analysis of tactics used, primarily by Republicans, to foment partisanship and division, exploiting preexisting social divides surrounding racial relations, gender roles, income inequality, and immigration that were stoked by political sideshows such as the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the impeachment of President Clinton, and the Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision in Bush v. Gore . Kruse and Zelizer also identify other factors accelerating the country’s polarization, particularly the transformation in communications brought on by the internet and the growth of ultrapartisan media. They also argue that the tactics employed in win-at-all-costs politics have played an instrumental role in dividing the country. Their analysis is thoughtful and credible, but political partisans who have benefited from the divisive atmosphere will be unconvinced that much of what is covered is actually a problem. (Jan.)
"[Fault Lines ] showcases innovative approaches to the major—mostly domestic—events of the recent American past, while providing ample historical grounding for comprehending the nation’s current state of division and despair…Kruse and Zelizer write their eminently readable book in a single, clear voice—no easy task for joint authors."
PopMatters - Zachary J. Lechner
"Kruse and Zelizer do an admirable job of creating a narrative out of the chaotic events of the recent past."
Los Angeles Review of Books - L. Benjamin Rolsky
"Refreshingly frank."
"With commanding knowledge and an eye for the telling detail, Kruse and Zelizer address the pressing historical question of how we arrived in today’s polarized America. The answer, they show, is not simple, but they explain its various dimensions in a cogent and fair-minded fashion. A splendid book."
"Fault Lines is a brilliantly written and urgently needed account of the last half century of American history, decades during which, as Kruse and Zelizer argue, Americans abandoned a search for common ground in favor of a political culture of endless, vicious, and—very often—mindless division. A gripping and troubling account of the origins of our turbulent, desperate times."
"In their energetic, informative history, Princeton University professors Kruse and Zelizer chronicle the post-Watergate era through the lens of growing divisions on immigration, race, the economy and add sexuality and class inequality to the mix…this history briskly moves through the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation process, Iran-Contra, Clinton impeachment, Bush v. Gore, Iraq War and the Affordable Care Act, and tensions that have been ratcheted up and exploited by the internet boom and ultra-partisan media that accompanied it."
"Fault Lines is a must-read. Kruse and Zelizer have taken the fragmented histories of a polarized, divided nation, and masterfully woven those threads into a tapestry that allows us to see not only what divides but what unites and that the choice is ours."
"Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer’s Fault Lines is a brilliant primer for understanding the troubling precedents for today’s mass American political dysfunction. Both historians are deeply informed and surefooted thinkers. A must-read foundational work for our time!"
history commentator for CNN Douglas Brinkley
"[With] deep detail and taut-as-a-thriller pacing…the authors detail how the Democratic and—especially—Republican parties moved the country from post-New Deal liberalism to an increasingly hard-right philosophy, culminating with Trump…If Fault Lines doesn’t provide easy answers to our current dilemma, its cleareyed, pin-sharp overview is a necessary map of how we got here."
Rolling Stone - Michaelangelo Matos
"For Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, Donald Trump is not some singular figure. He is ‘the result of trends decades in the making.’ Sober, clearly written, and profoundly insightful. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the forces of the last half century that have brought the country to the brink of disaster."
"Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer’s Fault Lines is a brilliant primer for understanding the troubling precedents for today’s mass American political dysfunction. Both historians are deeply informed and surefooted thinkers. A must-read foundational work for our time!"
"A forcefully argued analysis of the rifts that divide us and a lively, wide-ranging chronicle of the nation’s odyssey from Nixon to Trump."
"Fault Lines is a stunning work of the history of our present. An antidote to fake news and historical propaganda. In the Age of Trump, Kruse and Zelizer’s book sets the record straight. Every major cultural and political division over the past four decades comes to life in these pages, and in the telling we are confronted with the country we have been and the country we might become."
"Comprehensive, fair-minded—half an American lifetime between two covers and in one fast-paced telling!"
2018-10-28
Two Princeton professors add to the burgeoning literature about a fractured America, based largely on their university lectures on the subject.
Kruse (One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America , 2015, etc.) and Zelizer (The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society , 2015, etc.) organize their history around four principal fault lines: growing economic inequality, racial division, partisan polarization, and conflicts regarding gender and sexuality. In a clear, lively style, Kruse and Zelizer show how developments in these areas have divided the nation and made compromises for the common good more difficult. In coverage of the earlier years, the authors evenly distribute responsibility for the worsening conflicts. However, beginning with the genesis of the Obama administration, the narrative takes on an increasingly leftist slant as the authors minimize or omit the left's contributions to the widening divide, creating the impression that it was largely conservatives who were perpetuating an atmosphere of obstructionism and division. Conspicuously absent, for example, is any mention of intolerance and violence directed at conservative speakers on college campuses or of antifa thuggery generally. Alongside political and social divisions, the authors chronicle the fragmentation of American media, with three major TV networks and relatively sober newspapers of national stature replaced by cable TV, talk radio, and an infinite number of commentators on internet blogs and social media. As is well-known, this multiplicity of sources has led not to a better informed public but to the creation of partisan echo chambers that disagree even about fundamental facts, let alone their interpretation. The authors posit no overarching theories of how all this came about, nor do they offer a path forward to a better place. In discouraging detail, they lay out how short-sighted decisions and inflexible partisanship have placed a consensus on national identity and goals so far out of reach.
A left-leaning but readable, comprehensive history of the political and cultural trends that continue to erode any sense of American national unity.
