Here’s a sample paragraph about my own hometown: He gives you a sense of what it was really like to be alive during that era, something that few authors seriously try and even fewer ever accomplish.

It’s not just that it’s deeply researched and meticulously written ? though it is ? it’s that Perlstein has the rare gift of bringing the past to life. Before the Storm is one of the best political books I’ve ever read and one of the best descriptions of the roots of modern American conservatism anywhere. I thanked him, and then put it aside and didn’t pick it up again until last week. THE STORM….Last year Rick Perlstein sent me a copy of his 2001 book Before the Storm, a look at the rise of Barry Goldwater and movement conservatism in the early 60s. He has received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for independent scholars. His reviews, reporting, and essays have appeared in the New York Times, New York Observer, New Republic, Washington Post, London Review of Books, Columbia Journalism Review, the Nation, and the New Yorker. It ups the ante on what popular history can, and should, do.'-Mark Greif, 'The Village Voice'Ībout the Author Rick Perlstein is the bestselling author of The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. An exciting volume, an outstanding debut. one of the most stylish, riveting achievements in narrative history to appear in years. 'Daring, virtuosic writing, and encyclopedic mastery make. 'Combining prodigious research with journalistic flair, Rick Perlstein.has produced a detailed and dramatic narrative of the rise of the modern right.It's an amazing story, and Perlstein, a man of the left, does it justice.'-William Kristol, 'The New York Times Book Review' Vividly written, Before the Storm is an essential book about the 1960s. Buckley, Nelson Rockefeller, and Bill Moyers. Perlstein's narrative shines a light on a whole world of conservatives and their antagonists, including William F. At the heart of the story is Barry Goldwater, the renegade Republican from Arizona who loathed federal government, despised liberals, and mocked 'peaceful coexistence' with the USSR. of photos.īook Synopsis Acclaimed historian Rick Perlstein chronicles the rise of the conservative movement in the liberal 1960s. About the Book In an astute and surprising history of the 1960s as the cradle of the conservative movement, Perlstein's gutsy narrative history profiles the rise of Barry Goldwater, the rich, handsome Arizona Republican who scorned the federal bureaucracy and despised liberals on sight.16 pp.

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