Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan

by Michael Barone Narrated by William Lavelle

Overview

In this rare, sweeping history, Michael Barone draws from deep within the political and social record of modern America to tell the story of how the country of our parents and of our grandparents became the prosperous and powerful nation we know today.

Barone points out that the single most significant issue to dominate American politics in this century is that of who really is an American. Gone are the vaunted battles over the distribution of wealth and income. In their place are the powerfully rooted political battles fought between America's cultural poles: its racial and ethnic groups, its urban liberals and small-town conservatives, its state's rightists and centrists, and ultimately also between advocates of culturally diverse lifestyles.

Barone's extensive knowledge of the historical record and his portrayal of well-known individual participants add color and dimension to this narrative.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

A whistle-stop survey of U.S. politics from Franklin Roosevelt to George Bush, with visits at what seems like each biennial election, poll, primary, and policy question of these six decades. More than anything else it resembles a deluxe edition of The Almanac of American Politics (Barone & Co., 1982), of which Barone is coauthor, a blend of observation, statistical analysis, and minutiae. At points the book is good, as when Barone uses polling data to illuminate Truman's surprise 1948 victory over Dewey. But his overall theme of the primacy of cultural over economic issues isn't new, and with pronouncements such as, ``the whole country in the middle 1980s seemed at peace with itself,'' occasionally Barone lands somewhere between the fatuous and the meaningless. Some political junkies will feast, but most readers will do better with any one of several more general sur- veys, most recently James MacGregor Burns's The Crosswinds of Freedom (LJ 4/1/89).-- Robert F. Nardini, N. Chichester, N . H .

Booknews

A broad account of how Americans shaped their politics through the decades since the Depression. In contrast to most contemporary political historians, Barone (senior writer, US news and world report) argues that Americans have more often charted their political fortunes by cultural allegiances--regional, ethnic, religious, rural, and urban--than by economic struggles. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169906059
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2007
Edition description:	Unabridged

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