Overview

Two award-winning historians explore the origins of a divided America. In the middle of the 1970s, America entered a new era of doubt and division. Major political, economic, and social crises-Watergate, Vietnam, the rights revolutions of the 1960s-had cracked the existing social order. In the years that followed, the story of our own lifetimes would be written. Longstanding historical fault lines over income inequality, racial division, and a revolution in gender roles and sexual norms would deepen and fuel a polarized political landscape. In Fault Lines, leading historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer reveal how the divisions of the present day began almost four decades ago, and how they were echoed and amplified by a fracturing media landscape that witnessed the rise of cable TV, the internet, and social media. How did the United States become so divided? Fault Lines offers one of the few comprehensive, wide-angle history views toward an answer.

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9780393088663

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Reviews

Kruse and Zelizer do an admirable job of creating a narrative out of the chaotic events of the recent past. -- L. Benjamin Rolsky - Los Angeles Review of Books [With] deep detail and taut-as-a-thriller pacing...the authors detail how the Democratic and-especially-Republican parties moved the country from post-New Deal liberalism to an increasingly hard-right philosophy, culminating with Trump...If Fault Lines doesn't provide easy answers to our current dilemma, its cleareyed, pin-sharp overview is a necessary map of how we got here. -- Michaelangelo Matos - Rolling Stone Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer's Fault Lines is a brilliant primer for understanding the troubling precedents for today's mass American political dysfunction. Both historians are deeply informed and surefooted thinkers. A must-read foundational work for our time! -- Douglas Brinkley, history commentator for CNN

Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer's Fault Lines is a brilliant primer for understanding the troubling precedents for today's mass American political dysfunction. Both historians are deeply informed and surefooted thinkers. A must-read foundational work for our time! -- Douglas Brinkley, history commentator for CNN

A forcefully argued analysis of the rifts that divide us and a lively, wide-ranging chronicle of the nation's odyssey from Nixon to Trump. -- Bruce J. Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston University and author of The Seventies Fault Lines is a must-read. Kruse and Zelizer have taken the fragmented histories of a polarized, divided nation, and masterfully woven those threads into a tapestry that allows us to see not only what divides but what unites and that the choice is ours. -- Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of White Rage and One Person, No Vote Fault Lines is a stunning work of the history of our present. An antidote to fake news and historical propaganda. In the Age of Trump, Kruse and Zelizer's book sets the record straight. Every major cultural and political division over the past four decades comes to life in these pages, and in the telling we are confronted with the country we have been and the country we might become. -- Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and author of The Condemnation of Blackness Fault Lines is a brilliantly written and urgently needed account of the last half century of American history, decades during which, as Kruse and Zelizer argue, Americans abandoned a search for common ground in favor of a political culture of endless, vicious, and-very often-mindless division. A gripping and troubling account of the origins of our turbulent, desperate times. -- Jill Lepore, author of These Truths Comprehensive, fair-minded-half an American lifetime between two covers and in one fast-paced telling! -- David Frum, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of Trumpocracy Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer's Fault Lines is a brilliant primer for understanding the troubling precedents for today's mass American political dysfunction. Both historians are deeply informed and surefooted thinkers. A must-read foundational work for our time! -- Douglas Brinkley, history commentator for CNN, contributing editor to Vanity Fair and American Heritage, and author of Cronkite

[With] deep detail and taut-as-a-thriller pacing...the authors detail how the Democratic and-especially-Republican parties moved the country from post-New Deal liberalism to an increasingly hard-right philosophy, culminating with Trump...If Fault Lines doesn't provide easy answers to our current dilemma, its cleareyed, pin-sharp overview is a necessary map of how we got here. -- Michaelangelo Matos - Rolling Stone Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer's Fault Lines is a brilliant primer for understanding the troubling precedents for today's mass American political dysfunction. Both historians are deeply informed and surefooted thinkers. A must-read foundational work for our time! -- Douglas Brinkley, history commentator for CNN

Comprehensive, fair-minded--half an American lifetime between two covers and in one fast-paced telling!--David Frum, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of Trumpocracy A forcefully argued analysis of the rifts that divide us and a lively, wide-ranging chronicle of the nation's odyssey from Nixon to Trump.--Bruce J. Schulman, William E. Huntington Professor of History at Boston University and author of The Seventies

Author Information

Kevin M. Kruse is an award-winning scholar on twentieth-century American political history. Fault Lines grew out of the hugely popular course that he and Julian Zelizer co-created at Princeton University, The United States Since 1974. Julian E. Zelizer is an award-winning scholar on twentieth-century American political history. Fault Lines grew out of the hugely popular course that he and Kevin Kruse co-created at Princeton University, The United States Since 1974.

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