Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of Nixonland: a dazzling portrait of America on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the tumultuous political and economic times of the 1970s.
In January of 1973 Richard Nixon announced the end of the Vietnam War and prepared for a triumphant second term—until televised Watergate hearings revealed his White House as little better than a mafia den. The next president declared upon Nixon’s resignation “our long national nightmare is over”—but then congressional investigators exposed the CIA for assassinating foreign leaders. The collapse of the South Vietnamese government rendered moot the sacrifice of some 58,000 American lives. The economy was in tatters. And as Americans began thinking about their nation in a new way—as one more nation among nations, no more providential than any other—the pundits declared that from now on successful politicians would be the ones who honored this chastened new national mood.
Ronald Reagan never got the message. Which was why, when he announced his intention to challenge President Ford for the 1976 Republican nomination, those same pundits dismissed him—until, amazingly, it started to look like he might just win. He was inventing the new conservative political culture we know now, in which a vision of patriotism rooted in a sense of American limits was derailed in America’s Bicentennial year by the rise of the smiling politician from Hollywood. Against a backdrop of melodramas from the Arab oil embargo to Patty Hearst to the near-bankruptcy of America’s greatest city, The Invisible Bridge asks the question: what does it mean to believe in America? To wave a flag—or to reject the glibness of the flag wavers?
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“Perlstein once again delivers a
terrific hybrid biography of a Republican leader and the culture he shaped…The
scope of the work never feels limited. Perlstein examines the skeletons in the
Reagan, Ford, and Carter closets, finds remarkable overlooked details, and
perfectly captures the dead-heat drama of the Republican convention. Just as
deftly, he taps into the consciousness of bicentennial America. He sees this
world with fresh eyes…Always at the center of the narrative is Reagan, the
self-appointed hero who assured a jittery populace that Vietnam and Watergate
were just bad dreams. He was America’s cheerleader…A compelling, astute chronicle of
the politics and culture of late-twentieth-century America.”—
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
