A New York Times Notable Book!\nA New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice\nThe story of how Newt Gingrich and his allies tainted American politics, launching an enduring era of brutal partisan warfare\nWhen Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, President Obama observed that Trump “is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party.” In Burning Down the House, historian Julian Zelizer pinpoints the moment when our country was set on a path toward an era of bitterly partisan and ruthless politics, an era that was ignited by Newt Gingrich and his allies. In 1989, Gingrich brought down Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright and catapulted himself into the national spotlight. Perhaps more than any other politician, Gingrich introduced the rhetoric and tactics that have shaped Congress and the Republican Party for the last three decades. Elected to Congress in 1978, Gingrich quickly became one of the most powerful figures in America not through innovative ideas or charisma, but through a calculated campaign of attacks against political opponents, casting himself as a savior in a fight of good versus evil. Taking office in the post-Watergate era, he weaponized the good government reforms newly introduced to fight corruption, wielding the rules in ways that shocked the legislators who had created them. His crusade against Democrats culminated in the plot to destroy the political career of Speaker Wright.\nWhile some of Gingrich’s fellow Republicans were disturbed by the viciousness of his attacks, party leaders enjoyed his successes so much that they did little collectively to stand in his way. Democrats, for their part, were alarmed, but did not want to sink to his level and took no effective actions to stop him. It didn’t seem to matter that Gingrich’s moral conservatism was hypocritical or that his methods were brazen, his accusations of corruption permanently tarnished his opponents. This brand of warfare worked, not as a strategy for governance but as a path to power, and what Gingrich planted, his fellow Republicans reaped. He led them to their first majority in Congress in decades, and his legacy extends far beyond his tenure in office. From the Contract with America to the rise of the Tea Party and the Trump presidential campaign, his fingerprints can be seen throughout some of the most divisive episodes in contemporary American politics. Burning Down the House presents the alarming narrative of how Gingrich and his allies created a new normal in Washington.

Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich and the Rise of the New Republican Party

History

Zelizer, Julian E.

Americas

Penguin??Books

A majestic, big-picture account of the Great Society and the forces that shaped it Between November 1962, when he became president, and November 1966, when his party was routed in the midterm elections, Lyndon Johnson spearheaded the most transformative agenda in American politics since the New Deal. In just three years, he drove the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the War on Poverty, and Medicare and Medicaid, among a raft of other progressive initiatives. Dubbed the Great Society, it was an agenda whose ambition and achievement have never been matched, and it remains largely intact fifty years on. In The Fierce Urgency of Now, Julian E. Zelizer takes the full measure of the story in all its epic sweep. He provides unprecedented insight into the battles that raged inside Congress and the administration, and examines the often bitterly divided forces at play in the country—from religious groups and civil rights activists to labor unions and the media—during the tumultuous years when our political sights were set on the ideal of a Great Society.

The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society

Defining the Age: Daniel Bell, His Time and Ours

Starr, Paul

Biographies & Memoirs

Columbia University Press

The sociologist Daniel Bell was an uncommonly acute observer of the structural forces transforming the United States and other advanced societies in the twentieth century. The titles of Bell’s major books―The End of Ideology (1960), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)―became hotly debated frameworks for understanding the era when they were published.\nIn Defining the Age, Paul Starr and Julian E. Zelizer bring together a group of distinguished contributors to consider how well Bell’s ideas captured their historical moment and continue to provide profound insights into today’s world. Wide-ranging essays demonstrate how Bell’s writing has informed thinking about subjects such as the history of socialism, the roots of the radical right, the emerging postindustrial society, and the role of the university. The book also examines Bell’s intellectual trajectory and distinctive political stance. Calling himself “a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture,” he resisted being pigeon-holed, especially as a neoconservative.\nDefining the Age features essays from historians Jenny Andersson, David A. Bell, Michael Kazin, and Margaret O’Mara; sociologist Steven Brint; media scholar Fred Turner; and political theorists Jan-Werner Müller and Stefan Eich. While differing in their judgments, they agree on one premise: Bell’s ideas deserve the kind of nuanced and serious attention that they finally receive in this book.

Emerging as a distinct subfield in the 1970s, policy history has come to earn a respected place in interdisciplinary scholarship today. In this volume, introduced by an essay that reviews the development of policy history and the intellectual and professional challenges it has faced, a distinguished group of historians, political scientists, and sociologists offers ideas for how policy history might evolve and continue to grow in the years ahead.

New Directions in Policy History (Issues in Policy History)

Penn State University Press

New in the acclaimed Jewish Lives series: A biography of the rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who became a symbol of the marriage between religion and social justice &nbsp; "Zelizer's book is absolutely riveting, both as a study of a truly important figure within Jewish thought and in providing insight into the politics of the 1960s."--Sandy Levinson, Balkinization &nbsp; "When I marched in Selma, I felt my legs were praying." So said Polish-born American rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) of his involvement in the 1965 Selma civil rights march alongside Martin Luther King Jr. Heschel, who spoke with a fiery moralistic fervor, dedicated his career to the struggle to improve the human condition through faith. In this new biography, author Julian Zelizer tracks Heschel's early years and foundational influences--his childhood in Warsaw and early education in Hasidism, his studies in late 1920s and early 1930s Berlin, and the fortuitous opportunity, which brought him to the United States and saved him from the Holocaust, to teach at Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Theological Seminary. This deep and complex portrait places Heschel at the crucial intersection between religion and progressive politics in mid-twentieth-century America. To this day Heschel remains a symbol of the fight to make progressive Jewish values relevant in the secular world.

Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement (Jewish Lives)

Community & Culture

Yale University Press

Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-1945 & Black Protest and the Great Migration & Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism 2e & Conservatives in ... 1981-1989 & How the Other Half Lives 2e

Jacobs, Meg

Arnesen, Eric

Leviatin, David

Schulman, Bruce J.

Polenberg,Richard

Bedford/St.Martin's

Two award-winning historians explore the origins of a divided America.
If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: you might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, or the “Reagan Revolution” and the the rise of the New Right.
For leading historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, it all starts in 1974. In that one year, the nation was rocked by one major event after another: The Watergate crisis and the departure of President Richard Nixon, the first and only U.S. President to resign; the winding down of the Vietnam War and rising doubts about America’s military might; the fallout from the OPEC oil embargo that paralyzed America with the greatest energy crisis in its history; and the desegregation busing riots in South Boston that showed a horrified nation that our efforts to end institutional racism were failing.
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, Kruse and Zelizer reveal how the divisions of the present day began almost five decades ago, and how they were widened thanks to profound changes in our political system as well as a fracturing media landscape that was repeatedly transformed with the rise of cable TV, the internet, and social media.
How did the United States become so divided? Fault Lines offers a richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer. 16 pages of black and white illustrations

Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974

Kruse, Kevin M.

W.W.Norton&Company

“A gripping and troubling account of the origins of our turbulent times.”― Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States
When did America become polarized? For leading historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, it all starts in 1974 with the Watergate crisis, the OPEC oil embargo, desegregation busing riots in Boston, and the winding down of the Vietnam War.
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, called “refreshingly frank” by Eric Wakin of the New York Times, Kruse and Zelizer reveal how the discord of the present day began almost five decades ago. They deftly tell the story of how these rifts were widened thanks to profound changes in our political system as well as a fracturing media landscape that was repeatedly transformed with the rise of cable TV, the internet, and social media. 16 pages of black and white illustrations

In Arsenal of Democracy, historian and public intellectual Julian Zelizer shows how internal politics have influenced American foreign policy since the Cold War. Rejecting the notion that, prior to the presidency of George W. Bush, politics stopped at the water's edge,” Zelizer exposes the partisan fighting that shaped the foreign policies of presidents from FDR to Kennedy to Reagan, revealing the extent to which the GOP and Democratic party have alternately sought to define themselves as the party of war and the party of peace as the political mood shifted. Republicans, he shows, have not always been hawks; during World War II, it was the Democratic party that took the lead not only in entering war, but in ensuring that the national security apparatus that emerged would remain a fixture of the American political landscape even after the war was over. A definitive account of the complex interaction between domestic politics and foreign affairs over the last six decades, Arsenal of Democracy is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of national security.

Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism

Basic Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Zelizer, Julian E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Zelizer, Julian E.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Zelizer, Julian E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich and the Rise of the New Republican Party

The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society

Defining the Age: Daniel Bell, His Time and Ours

Defining the Age: Daniel Bell, His Time and Ours

New Directions in Policy History (Issues in Policy History)

Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement (Jewish Lives)

Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-1945 & Black Protest and the Great Migration & Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism 2e & Conservatives in ... 1981-1989 & How the Other Half Lives 2e

Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974

Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974

Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism