The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan

Rick Perlstein

Simon and Schuster, Aug 11, 2015 - History - 880 pages

The New York Times bestselling dazzling portrait of America on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the tumultuous political and economic times of the 1970s.

In January of 1973 Richard Nixon announced the end of the Vietnam War and prepared for a triumphant second term—until televised Watergate hearings revealed his White House as little better than a mafia den. The next president declared upon Nixon’s resignation “our long national nightmare is over”—but then congressional investigators exposed the CIA for assassinating foreign leaders. The collapse of the South Vietnamese government rendered moot the sacrifice of some 58,000 American lives. The economy was in tatters. And as Americans began thinking about their nation in a new way—as one more nation among nations, no more providential than any other—the pundits declared that from now on successful politicians would be the ones who honored this chastened new national mood.

Ronald Reagan never got the message. Which was why, when he announced his intention to challenge President Ford for the 1976 Republican nomination, those same pundits dismissed him—until, amazingly, it started to look like he just might win. He was inventing the new conservative political culture we know now, in which a vision of patriotism rooted in a sense of American limits was derailed in America’s Bicentennial year by the rise of the smiling politician from Hollywood. Against a backdrop of melodramas from the Arab oil embargo to Patty Hearst to the near-bankruptcy of America’s greatest city, The Invisible Bridge asks the question: what does it mean to believe in America? To wave a flag—or to reject the glibness of the flag wavers?

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - nog - LibraryThing

I've knocked off a half star because of too much cultural history and the often ambiguity of what year a particular event is occurring in -- he sometimes skips around a bit in time. Otherwise, it's ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - gayla.bassham - LibraryThing

This isn't quite the achievement that Nixonland is, and it's overly long -- seriously, I am the target audience for this book and even I grew impatient when I realized that its 800 pages only covered ...

Contents

• Small and Suspicious Circles: 1
• Stories: 24
• Let Them Eat Brains: 50
• Executive Privilege: 64
• A Whale of a Good Cheerleader: 78
• Sam Ervin: 94
• John Dean: 116
• Nostalgia: 145
• The Year Without Christmas Lights: 174
• That Thing Upstairs Isnt My Daughter: 205
• Hank Aaron: 225
• Here Comes the Pitch: 241
• Judging: 259
• There Used to Be a President: 272
• New Right?: 286
• Watergate Babies: 326
• Star: 340
• Governing: 408
• Disease Disease Disease: 420
• New Right: 443
• Weimar Summer: 468
• The Nations Soul: 515
• Has the Gallup Poll Gone Bananas?: 539
• Negatives Are Positives: 568
• Not the Candidate of Kooks: 594
• Born Again: 622
• Always Shuck the Tamale: 649
• They Yearned to Believe: 678
• Bicentennial: 708
• Youre in the Catbird Seat: 726
• Dont Let Satan Have His Way: 747
• The End?: 770
• Acknowledgments: 805
• Index: 811

About the author

Rick Perlstein is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan; Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, a New York Times bestseller picked as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by over a dozen publications; and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, which won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Award for history and appeared on the best books of the year lists of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. His essays and book reviews have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Village Voice, and Slate, among others. A contributing editor and board member of In These Times magazine, he lives in Chicago.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
• Author: Rick Perlstein
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2015
• ISBN: 1476782423, 9781476782423
• Length: 880 pages
• Subjects: History / General; History / Modern / 20th Century; History / United States / 20th Century; Political Science / American Government / Executive Branch; Political Science / American Government / General; Political Science / Political Ideologies / Conservatism & Liberalism; Political Science / Political Process / Leadership