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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

As general counsel of Lockheed Martin, Comey rejected a whistleblower’s claim that a $24 billion Coast Guard project was riddled with problems. The whistleblower was right—and Comey was wrong.

A resurgent protest culture fights back against Rahm Emanuel’s austerity agenda.

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.

Blogs

Who needs a majority—or democracy—when you just know that your cause is the most righteous?
Past shuttered schools and glass-strewn vacant lots, the Chicago Teachers Union documents the likely toll of Rahm Emanuel's latest...
A new book argues that the media failed to grasp the frightening extremism of the anti-immigrant border patrols of a few years ago—...
Ultimately, whether a party cements its gains depends not on demographics but performance.
Mayor Emanuel’s flash school-closing announcement is meeting civil disobeidence from Chicago teachers—who are having no trouble...
The late New York Times columnist believed telling critical truths about your country was a higher form of patriotism.
Past predictions of progressive ascendancy have foundered on new mass fears no one could have predicted—or new mass fears...
Just because the Hispanic population is growing doesn't necessarily mean Democrats will harvest their votes forever—for what if...
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