A whistle-stop survey of U.S. politics from Franklin Roosevelt to George Bush, with visits at what seems like each biennial election, poll, primary, and policy question of these six decades. More than anything else it resembles a deluxe edition of The Almanac of American Politics (Barone & Co., 1982), of which Barone is coauthor, a blend of observation, statistical analysis, and minutiae. At points the book is good, as when Barone uses polling data to illuminate Truman's surprise 1948 victory over Dewey. But his overall theme of the primacy of cultural over economic issues isn't new, and with pronouncements such as, ``the whole country in the middle 1980s seemed at peace with itself,'' occasionally Barone lands somewhere between the fatuous and the meaningless. Some political junkies will feast, but most readers will do better with any one of several more general sur- veys, most recently James MacGregor Burns's The Crosswinds of Freedom (LJ 4/1/89).-- Robert F. Nardini, N. Chichester, N . H .
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Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan
Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan
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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940169906059 |
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Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
Publication date: | 01/01/2007 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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