Liberalism and Its Discontents

by Alan Brinkley

Book Overview

How did liberalism, the great political tradition that from the New Deal to the 1960s seemed to dominate American politics, fall from favor so far and so fast? In this history of liberalism since the 1930s, a distinguished historian offers an eloquent account of postwar liberalism, where it came from, where it has gone, and why. The book supplies a crucial chapter in the history of twentieth-century American politics as well as a valuable and clear...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674001850
• ISBN13: 9780674001855
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

People of the 'L' word

Tracing the archaeology of liberalism the tale of its discontents is the autobiography of the primordial lockean and his pilgrim's progress since Roosevelt onwards. Like deviations around the mean, the grumblers and near party linears receive a series of shaggy dog stories for their spicy 'deviations'. I went to library looking for Ruggiero's History of Liberalism but came home with this instead, more fun. Lately, the number of shaggy dogs is increasing exponentially given the Bush regime and the discontents could mutate into malcontents. Meanwhile liberalism lumbers ever onward, an ism that has taken more torpedoes than most, yet without sinking.

A collection of insightful, but ultimately disparate, essays

These 17 essays are wonderful when read individually. All are elouqent and insightful (as you would expect from Brinkley), especially the biographical ones such as "The Passions of Oral Roberts", "Robert Penn Warren, T. Harry Williams, and Huey Long," and "The Rise of Franklin Roosevelt." "Icons of the American Establishment" features a wonderful biography of Henry Stimson and readers will enjoy the chapters about Allard Lowenstein and Richard Hofstader.Nonetheless, readers should be aware that most of this material is not new, as Brinkley explicity states in the introduction. Most of these essays have been published before in one form or another