Restless Giant: The United States From Watergate to Bush v. Gore (69 page)

Urban and suburban life
are covered by Thomas Sugrue,
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
(Princeton, 1996); James Goodman,
Blackout
(New York, 2003); Robert Self,
American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland
(Princeton, 2003); Robert Fishman,
Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia
(New York, 1987); Andres Duany et al.,
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
(New York, 2000); Kenneth Jackson,
Crabgrass
Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States
(New York, 1985); Jane Holtz Kay,
Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back
(New York, 1997); and Malcolm Gladwell,
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference
(New York, 2002). For
small town and rural life
see especially Peter Davis,
Hometown
(New York, 1982); and Richard Davies,
Main Street Blues: The Decline of Small-Town America
(Columbus, Ohio, 1998).

Family patterns
have changed greatly during these years. Among the many books that have looked at these changes are Arlie Hochschild, with Anne Machung,
The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home
(New York, 1989); Stephanie Coontz,
The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
(New York, 1992); Arlene Skolnick,
Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty
(New York, 1994); and James Wilson,
The Marriage Problem: How Our Country Has Weakened Families
(New York, 2002). Some of these subtitles make it obvious that writers about American families reach very different conclusions about the legacy of these changes.

Important books about
women
—and about
gender relations
—include Susan Faludi,
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
(New York, 1991); Faludi,
Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man
(New York, 1999); Andrew Hacker,
Mismatch: The Growing Gulf Between Women and Men
(New York, 2003); Alice Kessler-Harris,
In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America
(New York, 2001); Jane Mansbridge,
Why We Lost the ERA
(Chicago, 1986); Victor Fuchs,
Women’s Quest for Economic Equality
(Cambridge, Mass., 1988); and William Saletan,
Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War
(Berkeley, 2003).

Studies of
sexual trends
have proliferated in recent years. For a widely cited survey, see John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman,
Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
(Chicago, 1997). Another scholarly study is David Allyn,
Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History
(Boston, 2000). See also Mirko Grmek,
History of AIDS: Emergence and Origin of a Modern Pandemic
(Princeton, 1990); Randy Shilts,
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
(New York, 1988); and Susan Sontag,
AIDS and Its Metaphors
(New York, 1989). The books by Fukuyama (
The Great Disruption
, cited above) and by Gertrude Himmelfarb, cited below, have much to say about sexual trends.

Religious developments
, notably the ascendance of the Religious Right, have generated a lively literature. An excellent overview of political aspects is William Martin,
With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America
(New York, 1996). Other useful books are Garry Wills,
Under God: Religion and American Politics
(New York, 1990); Sara Diamond,
Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Religious Right
(New York, 1998); Robert Wuthnow,
The Crisis in the Churches: Spiritual Malaise, Fiscal Woe
(New York, 1997); and Robert Fogel,
The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism
(Chicago, 2000). Frances FitzGerald,
Cities on a Hill: A Journey Through American Cultures
(New York, 1986), includes material on the Reverend Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. For a historical approach to religion in American life, see James Morone,
Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History
(New Haven, 2002). Wolfe,
Moral Freedom
, mentioned earlier, is relevant and useful.

Environment:
Writing in this field has blossomed. An upbeat survey of developments is Gregg Easterbrook,
A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism
(New York, 1995). A pessimistic account is Al Gore,
Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit
(Boston, 1992). For a historical survey, see Ted Steinberg,
Down to
Earth: Nature’s Role in American History
(New York, 2002). See also Barbara Freese,
Coal: A Human History
(Cambridge, Mass., 2003); Robert Gottlieb,
Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement
(Washington, 1993); Samuel Hays,
Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985
(New York, 1987); Marc Reisner,
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
(New York, 1993); Adam Rose,
The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism
(New York, 2001); and Hal Rothman,
The Greening of a Nation: Environmentalism in the United States Since 1945
(Orlando, 1998). Two widely read books by leading environmentalists are Bill McKibben,
The End of Nature
(New York, 1989), and John McPhee,
The Control of Nature
(New York, 1989).

Education:
A helpful survey is David Tyack and Larry Cuban,
Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform
(Cambridge, Mass., 1995). See also two books by Diane Ravitch:
Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms
(New York, 2000) and The
Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980
(New York, 1983). John Jennings,
Why National Standards and Tests? Politics and the Quest for Better Schools
(Thousand Oaks, Calif., 1998) focuses on debates in the 1990s. Other useful books include Nicholas Lemann,
The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy
(New York, 1999); and Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, eds.,
The Black-White Test Score Gap
(Washington, 1998). Advocates of school reform in the new century include Abigail Thernstrom,
No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning
(New York, 2003), and John Chubb and Tom Loveless, eds.,
Bridging the Achievement Gap
(Washington, 2002). See also the book by Zimmerman, listed below.

Cultural trends/values:
Robert Bellah et al.,
Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life
(Berkeley, 1985) is a critical evaluation of American values in the early 1980s. John de Graaf et al.,
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
(San Francisco, 2001) raps American materialism in the 1990s. For more on consumerism, see the books by Brooks and Cohen, mentioned above. Robert Hughes,
Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America
(New York, 1993) deplores many aspects of American culture. See also Eric Schlosser,
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
(Boston, 2001). Other broadly conceived books concerned with trends in American culture include Fukuyama,
The Great Disruption
, and the volumes by Brooks, Putnam, and Wolfe, all mentioned earlier.

Books concerned with the
media and film
include Mary Ann Watson,
Defining Visions: Television and the American Experience Since 1945
(Fort Worth, 1998), a fine survey; James Fallows,
Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy
(New York, 1996); Robert Downie and Robert Kaiser,
The News about the News: American Journalism in Peril
(New York, 2002); and Ronald Davis,
Celluloid Mirrors: Hollywood and American Society Since 1945
(Fort Worth, 1997).

Among the books concerned with the “
culture wars
” of the late 1980s and 1990s are: James Hunter,
Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America
(New York, 1991); Gertrude Himmelfarb,
One Nation, Two Cultures
(New York, 1999); Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
(New York, 1991); John Wilson,
The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education
(Durham, N.C., 1995); Jonathan Zimmerman,
Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools
(Cambridge, Mass., 2002); Gary Nash et al.,
History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past
(New York, 1997); Robert Bork,
Slouching Toward Gomorrah:
Modern Liberalism and American Decline
(New York, 1996); and Fukuyama,
The Great Disruption
, listed above.

Civil Rights and Race Relations:
There is an especially voluminous literature concerned with these subjects. Overviews include Gary Gerstle,
American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century
(Princeton, 2001); Andrew Hacker,
Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal
(New York, 1995); Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom,
America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible
(New York, 1997); Orlando Patterson,
The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s “Racial” Crisis
(Washington, 1997); Jennifer Hochschild,
Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of America
(Princeton, 1996); and John Higham, ed.,
Civil Rights and Social Wrongs: Black-White Relations Since World War II
(University Park, Pa., 1997).

For affirmative action, see Terry Anderson,
The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action
(New York, 2004); William Bowen and Derek Bok,
The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions
(Princeton, 1998); Hugh Davis Graham,
Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Affirmative Action and Immigration Policy in America
(New York, 2002); and Ball, listed above. Other books concerning developments in race relations include Nicholas Lemann,
The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America
(New York, 1991); Derrick Bell,
Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfilled Hopes for Racial Reform
(New York, 2004); Gary Orfield,
Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education
(New York, 1996); and Paul Sniderman and Thomas Piazza,
Black Pride and Black Prejudice
(Princeton, 2002), a survey of attitudes about race. See also the previously mentioned books by Gillon, Gladwell, Katz, Klarman, Skrentny, Sugrue, Self, and William Julius Wilson.

Immigration/Ethnicity:
Relevant books include David Hollinger,
Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism
(New York, 1995); Roger Daniels and Otis Graham,
Debating Immigration, 1882–Present
(Lanham, Md., 2001); Daniels,
Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life
(New York, 2002); and Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf, eds.,
E Pluribus Unum: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation
(New York, 2001). Among the books featuring worries about the size of immigration to America are George Borjas,
Heaven’s Door: Immigration and the American Economy
(Princeton, 1999); Peter Brimelow,
Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster
(New York, 1995); and Samuel Huntington,
Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity
(New York, 2004). For other perspectives see Nathan Glazer,
We Are All Multiculturalists Now
(New Haven, 1997), and the books by Schlesinger and Hugh Davis Graham, cited above. A fine local study of ethnic conflict is Jonathan Rieder,
Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn
(Cambridge, Mass., 1985).

The 1970s/Ford and Carter Presidencies:
Interpretive surveys of the 1970s include Bruce Schulman,
The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics
(New York, 2001); David Frum,
How We Got Here: The ’70s, the Decade That Brought You Modern Life (For Better or Worse)
(New York, 2000); Peter Carroll,
It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of the 1970s
(New York, 1982); and Beth Bailey and David Farber, eds.,
America in the Seventies
(Lawrence, Kans., 2004). Critiques of American life in the 1970s include Christopher Lasch,
The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
(New York, 1978); and two collections of essays by Tom Wolfe,
Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter, and Vine
(New York, 1976) and
In Our Time
(New York, 1980). Battles in Boston over busing to accomplish racial balance receive excellent treatment in Ronald Formisano,
Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s
(Chapel Hill, 1991), and J. Anthony Lukas,
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
(New York, 1986).

For the Ford administration, see John Greene,
The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford
(Lawrence, Kans., 1995); A. James Reichley,
Conservatives in an Age of Change: The Nixon and Ford Administrations
(Washington, 1981); and James Mann,
Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet
(New York, 2004). As its title indicates, Mann’s book is also informative about later decades. For the Carter years, see Gary Fink and Hugh Davis Graham, eds.,
The Carter Presidency: Policy Choices in the Post-New Deal Era
(Lawrence, Kans., 1998); Burton Kaufman,
The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr.
(Lawrence, Kans., 1993); Gaddis Smith,
Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years
(New York, 1986); and Jimmy Carter,
Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President
(New York, 1982).