1968: The Election That Changed America (American Ways Series)

The race for the White House in 1968 was a watershed event in American politics. In this compact and evenhanded narrative analysis, Lewis L. Gould shows how the events of 1968 changed the way Americans felt about politics and their leaders; how Republicans used the skills they brought to Richard Nixon's campaign to create a generation-long ascendancy in presidential politics; how Democrats, divided and torn after 1968, emerged as only crippled challengers for the White House throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Bitterness over racial issues and the Vietnam War that marked the 1968 election continued to shape national affairs. The election, Mr. Gould observes, accelerated an erosion of confidence in American institutions that has not yet reached a conclusion. In this lucid account he considers the phenomena of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, the campaigns of Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace, and the extraordinary events of what McCarthy later called the "Hard Year."