Against the Wind Against the Wind

Against the Wind

Edward Kennedy and the Rise of Conservatism, 1976-2009

    • 5.0 • 1 Rating
    • $13.99
    • $13.99

Publisher Description

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • From the author of Catching the Wind comes the second volume of the definitive biography of Ted Kennedy and a history of modern American liberalism.

“Magisterial . . . an intricate, astute study of political power brokering comparable to Robert A. Caro’s profile of Lyndon Johnson in Master of the Senate.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)


Against the Wind completes Neal Gabler’s magisterial biography of Ted Kennedy, but it also unfolds the epic, tragic story of the fall of liberalism and the destruction of political morality in America. With Richard Nixon having stilled the liberal wind that once propelled Kennedy’s—and his fallen brothers’—political crusades, Ted Kennedy faced a lonely battle. As Republicans pressed Reaganite dogmas of individual freedom and responsibility and Democratic centrists fell into line, Kennedy was left as the most powerful voice legislating on behalf of those society would neglect or punish: the poor, the working class, and African Americans.

Gabler shows how the fault lines that cracked open in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam were intentionally widened by Kennedy’s Republican rivals to create a moral vision of America that stood in direct opposition to once broadly shared commitments to racial justice and economic equality. Yet even as he fought this shift, Ted Kennedy’s personal moral failures in this era—the endless rumors of his womanizing and public drunkenness and his bizarre behavior during the events that led to rape accusations against his nephew William Kennedy Smith—would be used again and again to weaken his voice and undercut his claims to political morality.

Tracing Kennedy’s life from the wilderness of the Reagan years through the compromises of the Clinton era, from his rage against the craven cruelty of George W. Bush to his hope that Obama would deliver on a lifetime of effort on behalf of universal health care, Gabler unfolds Kennedy’s heroic legislative work against the backdrop of a nation grown lost and fractured. In this outstanding conclusion to the saga that began with Catching the Wind, Neal Gabler offers his inimitable insight into a man who fought to keep liberalism alive when so many were determined to extinguish it. Against the Wind sheds new light both on a revered figure in the American Century and on America’s current existential crisis.

GENRE
Biographies & Memoirs
RELEASED
2022
November 15
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
1,264
Pages
PUBLISHER
Crown
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
46
MB

More Books Like This

Last Lion Last Lion
2009
Master of the Senate Master of the Senate
2002
Imperfect Presidents Imperfect Presidents
2007
Bill Clinton Bill Clinton
2007
The Passage of Power The Passage of Power
2012
A Complicated Man A Complicated Man
2010

More Books by Neal Gabler

Walt Disney Walt Disney
2006
An Empire of Their Own An Empire of Their Own
1989
Catching the Wind Catching the Wind
2020
Life: The Movie Life: The Movie
1998
Barbra Streisand Barbra Streisand
2016
Walt Disney Walt Disney
2020

Customers Also Bought

Ted Kennedy Ted Kennedy
2022
The Outlier The Outlier
2021
The Trials of Harry S. Truman The Trials of Harry S. Truman
2022
Reaganland Reaganland
2020
Watergate Watergate
2022
JFK JFK
2020