The Liberal Hour
Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
An engaging be hind-the-scenes look at the lesser-known forces that fueled the profound social reforms of the 1960s
Provocative and incisive , The Liberal Hour reveals how Washington, so often portrayed as a target of reform in the 1960s, was in fact the era's most effective engine of change. The movements of the 1960s have always drawn the most attention from the decade's chroniclers, but it was in the halls of government-so often the target of protesters' wrath-that the enduring reforms of the era were produced. With nuance and panache, Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot present the real-life characters-from giants like JFK and Johnson to lesser-known senators and congressmen-who drove these reforms and were critical to the passage of key legislation. The Liberal Hour offers an engrossing portrait of this extraordinary moment when more progressive legislation was passed than in almost any other era in American history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mackenzie and Weisbrot (Maximum Danger), professors of government and history respectively at Colby College, provide an insightful and well-argued analysis of the 1960s' social, economic and policy dynamics that opened both the public and the government to great and necessary social legislation. The authors argue that the postwar movement of political power from the cities to the suburbs, the decline of conservative Southern Democrats' power in the party and the confident climate of prosperity facilitated the greatest and most far-reaching federal legislation since the New Deal. Unlike many historians of this period, Weisbrot and Mackenzie, in addition to telling of key civil rights legislation and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, also give due and detailed diligence to environmental legislation, such as the Clean Air Act and the Wilderness Act, which defined strict rules to ensure federally owned wilderness largely remained wilderness. Throughout, the authors reveal how prosperity and a rare window of real opportunity with Democrats in power on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue fueled domestic reform.
