In this concise yet thorough history of America in the 1980s, Doug Rossinow takes the full measure of Ronald Reagan's presidency and the ideology of Reaganism. Believers in libertarian economics and a muscular foreign policy, Reaganite conservatives in the 1980s achieved impressive success in their efforts to transform American government, politics, and society, ushering in the political and social system Americans inhabit today.
Rossinow links current trends in economic inequality to the policies and social developments of the Reagan era. He reckons with the racial politics of Reaganism and its debt to the backlash generated by the civil rights movement, as well as Reaganism's entanglement with the politics of crime and the rise of mass incarceration. Rossinow narrates the conflicts that rocked U.S. foreign policy toward Central America, and he explains the role of the recession during the early 1980s in the decline of manufacturing and the growth of a service economy.
From the widening gender gap to the triumph of yuppies and rap music, from Reagan's tax cuts and military buildup to the celebrity of Michael Jackson and Madonna, from the era's Wall Street scandals to the successes of Bill Gates and Sam Walton, from the first "war on terror" to the end of the Cold War and the brink of America's first war with Iraq, this history, lively and readable yet sober and unsparing, gives readers vital perspective on a decade that dramatically altered the American landscape.
Doug Rossinow, professor of history at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota, is the author of numerous works, including Visions of Progress: The Left-Liberal Tradition in America. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oslo and is past president of the Peace History Society.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction: Common Sense 1. The Time Is Now 2. The Agenda 3. Victory on Capitol Hill 4. An Aggressive Foreign Policy 5. The Purge 6. 1983: The World at the Brink 7. The High Eighties 8. Days of Fear 9. The Winner 10. Arms and the Man 11. The Crisis 12. Strength Through Peace 13. The Election of Willie Horton 14. The Free World 15. Top of the Heap Notes Index
What People are Saying About This
Jeremi Suri
This is one of the best books on the 1980s written to date. Rossinow offers a deeply researched and compelling account of the decade in its many facets: political, economic, cultural, and international.
