"This book, by one of America's most intelligent and decent political writers, tells liberals how the conservative movement rose and fell, and how they could emulate its successes while avoiding its failures." --George Packer, author of Blood of the Liberals and The Assassins' Gate
"No one is better than Todd Gitlin at describing the crucial dynamic through which movements gain or lose political power. Justly celebrated for his seminal work on such dynamics during the 1960s, Gitlin now explains everything that's happened since, with passion and wisdom--and happily, because of Bushism's collapse, legitimate optimism about the future." --Michael Tomasky, Editor, Guardian America
"An impassioned yet realistic plea for Democrats and liberals to become more serious about politics. They would do well to follow his advice." --Alan Wolfe, Director, Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, Boston College
"A brilliant and indispensable book. Gitlin convincingly urges liberals to take seriously the greater difficulty the Democrats have forging cohesion among identity-based groups over the Republicans persuading the less diverse Republican base to bury disagreements in the drive for victory. Gitlin argues that Democrats will have to bite the bullet and unite under a big tent. It's a hard lesson for ardent newcomers to the movement to swallow. Gitlin is dead right." --Thomas B. Edsall, Special Correspondent, The New Republic
"This is an indispensable book by one of our most gifted public intellectuals. Todd Gitlin explains--with splendid scholarship, reporting, and wit--how the Bush machine debased our political life and how progressives, in all their variety, are struggling to build a new majority. It is the best guide we have to America's recent past and its possible future." --Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan and Professor of History, Georgetown University
According to journalism professor Gitlin, the Republicans have employed a bulldozer approach to politics in everything from fiscal policy to science to diplomacy, operating with absolute certainty and bolstered by true believers among the conservative movement. What will be the lasting effect on U.S. politics of secrecy, corruption, and international mishaps that have tarnished the American image at home and abroad? What will be the enduring impact of the bulldozer on the future of American politics? Gitlin explores these questions by first analyzing the suspension of reason by much of the American public during the Bush administration that has allowed it to ignore the failures and incompetence for so long. He offers lessons to be learned from the disastrous experience for future elections, politics, and governance. Gitlin examines discontent among Democrats and prospects for a revived progressive movement, following on considerable momentum from the decline of the Bush presidency. He concludes with a section examining the potential for lasting renewal of a progressive politics as bloggers and others move to stop the conservative movement. Bush, Vanessa
Todd Gitlin is the author of fourteen books, including, most recently, The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election (with Liel Leibovitz); The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals; other titles include The Intellectuals and the Flag; Letters to a Young Activist; Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives; The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars; The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage; Inside Prime Time; The Whole World Is Watching; Uptown: Poor Whites in Chicago (co-author); two novels, Sacrifice and The Murder of Albert Einstein; and a book of poetry, Busy Being Born. These books have been translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. He also edited Watching Television and Campfires of the Resistance.
In February 2011, Counterpoint will publish his novel, Undying.
He has contributed to many books and published widely in general periodicals (The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Boston Globe, Dissent, The New Republic, The Nation, Wilson Quarterly, Harper's, American Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review, The American Prospect, et al.), online magazines (tnr.com, prospect.org, openDemocracy.net), and scholarly journals (Theory and Society, Journal of Communication, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, et al.). He is on the editorial boards of Dissent and the Progressive Book Club, and a contributing writer to Mother Jones.
He is a regular contributor to the blog TPMcafe.com and the "Entanglements" and "The Book" blogs at The New Republic online.
He has been a columnist at the New York Observer and the San Francisco Examiner. During the 2008 campaign he is wrote a weekly "Sunday Watch" column for Columbia Journalism Review online and the Huffington Post. His poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, Yale Review, and The New Republic.
In 2000, Sacrifice won the Harold U. Ribalow Prize for books on Jewish themes. The Sixties and The Twilight of Common Dreams were Notable Books in the New York Times Book Review. Inside Prime Time received the nonfiction award of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association; The Sixties was a finalist for that award and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
He holds degrees from Harvard University (mathematics), the University of Michigan (political science), and the University of California, Berkeley (sociology). He was the third president of Students for a Democratic Society, in 1963-64, and coordinator of the SDS Peace Research and Education Project in 1964-65, during which time he helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War and the first American demonstrations against corporate aid to the apartheid regime in South Africa. During 1968-69, he was an editor and writer for the San Francisco Express Times, and through 1970 wrote widely for the underground press. In 2003-06, he was a member of the Board of Directors of Greenpeace USA.
He is a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the Ph. D. program in Communications at Columbia University. Earlier, he was for sixteen years a professor of sociology and director of the mass communications program at the University of California, Berkeley, and then for seven years a professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University. During 1994-95, he held the chair in American Civilization at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has been a resident at the Bellagio Study Center in Italy and the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, California, a fellow at the Media Studies Center in New York, and a visiting professor at Yale University, the University of Oslo, the University of Toronto, East China Normal University in Shanghai, and the Institut Supérieur des Langues de Tunis in Tunisia.
He lectures frequently on culture and politics in the United States and abroad (Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Russia, Greece, Turkey, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, Mexico, Morocco). He has appeared on many National Public Radio programs including Fresh Air as well as PBS, ABC, CBS and CNN. He lives in New York City with his wife, Laurel Cook.
This review is from: The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals (Hardcover)
This is a great book for old liberal political junkies like myself. Todd Gitlin the auther shows no mercy in slicing and dicing the current administration and Christian Conservatives. Those who should buy and read "The Bulldozer and the Big Tent" won't and those who do most will likely ignore the author's conclusions and rather sound political advice.
The format is all to familuar Federalists (Hamilton) and Anti-Federalists(Jefferson) with the Democrats being the Federalists and the Republicans being the Jeffersonian Anti-Federalists. I won't give away how Gitlin determined this but some may be amused with his logic. The Republicans are of course ignorant, lazy, uneducated white Christain Southerners and the Democrats are a bunch of hedonistic self certered Liberals who can't get beyond their own petty seft interest.
That pretty up much sums up the book. If your are a political junkie you can now fill in the blanks, if you are not, well you haven't got this far in the review .
"The Bulldozer and the Big Tent" is for sure one of the first of many books that will tear apart the current Bush administration and where the Republican Party is no at.
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