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Rick Perlstein | The Nation

Rick Perlstein

Author Bios

Rick Perlstein

Rick Perlstein

Rick Perlstein is the author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Award for history, and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008), a New York Times bestseller picked as one of the best nonfiction books of the year by over a dozen publications. A former online columnist for The New Republic and Rolling Stone and former chief national correspondent for the Village Voice, his journalism and essays have appeared in Newsweek, The Nation, the New York Times, and many other publications. Perlstein has been called the "chronicler extraordinaire of American conservatism" by Politico and the "hypercaffeinated Herodotus of the American century" by The Nation. He lives in Chicago, where he is at work on a book on the 1970s and the rise of Ronald Reagan. He plays jazz piano on the side.

Articles

News and Features

The forty-two-minute recording, acquired by James Carter IV, confirms Atwater’s incendiary remarks and places them in context.

The long-running feud between moderates and conservatives is over. The wackos have won.

The continuous readjustment of expectations downward: For historians like Jefferson Cowie and Judith Stein, that was the key experience of the 1970s.

Was Patty Hearst really a rebel in search of a cause?

The conservative noise machine is coming around to support him--if it
can keep its stories straight.

A historian plugs some suspicious gaps in two revisionist histories of Vietnam.

New polling data shows that the majority of Americans are leaning liberal. How long will it take politicians and the media to get that?

China has become like Israel: No matter the party, no matter the leader, the US government will defend its actions.

The ICE chief's comments about immigration and unions raise troubling questions. Congress should seek answers.

In December the leaders of the Democratic Leadership Council, Al From and Bruce Reed, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about what the Democrats had to do to attract heartland

Blogs

New polling suggests Rahm Emanuel isn't playing in Chicago. Here's why—and why the national media should pay attention.
The Academy Awards this year were supposed to be “political.” A reminder of a time when that word really meant something.
A smart young college student tried to find a place for himself in the modern Republican Party—and ended up running screaming in the...
In a belated birthday wish, a reminder of how morally obtuse Ronald Reagan could be.
In his State of the Union, Obama naively proposed universal preschool as a conservative idea. Conservatives will not agree.
When conservatives challenge curricula like they did last week in Fairfax County, Virginia, they reveal fundamental tensions in liberal...
This week, friends and colleagues of Aaron Swartz gathered to remember the late activist—and produced a ritual unlike anything...
We'd all like to see Congress make voting more free, fair and uniform—but unfortunately federalism gets in the way.