Making America Conservative in the 1970s

The standard explanation for the rise of conservatism in the US is the "backlash theory," which posits a hard-right turn among important segments of the American electorate in response to the sudden liberalization of American culture that took place during the 1960s. But a new book edited by Bruce Schulman and Julian Zelizer shows us that it's not quite as simple as all that. In Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, a select group of top scholars make the case that it's the 1970s, not the 60s, that is the crucial decade for the rise of conservatism. Essays like Bethany E. Moreton's "Make Payroll, Not War," Alice O'Connor's "Financing the Counterrevolution," and Jeremi Suri's "Détente and Its Discontents" show us in detail how the forces of conservatism responded to the events of the day and rose to the top of American politics. Popmatters calls Rightward Bound "a highly important and useful study, and one that offers scholars a new way of grasping conservatism." If you want to go a little deeper than the backlash theory, Rightward Bound is the place to start.