The Roots of Polarization: From the Racial Realignment to the Culture Wars

A deeply researched account of how battles over civil rights in the 1960s shaped today's partisan culture wars.

In the late twentieth century, gay rights, immigration, gun control, and abortion debates all burst onto the political scene, scrambling the parties and polarizing the electorate. Neil A. O'Brian traces the origins of today's political divide on these issues to the 1960s when Democrats and Republicans split over civil rights. It was this partisan polarization over race, he argues,...