Customer Reviews

Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore (Oxford History of the United States, vol. 11)

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James T. Patterson's "Restless Giant", Volume 11 (and last chronologically) in the Oxford History of the United States puts an exclamation point on this gem of a series. Professor Patterson follows up on his own penultiate volume in the series, "Grand Expectations", with aplomb. David M. Kennedy, now the editor of the series, succeeding the late C. Vann Woodward, and himself the author of the antepenultimate volume, "Freedom from Fear", perhaps sums up the rationale for studying such recent history in his forward to this book: "It is often said that the history we know the least well is the history of our own time, particularly the decades immediately surrounding our own birth. Here (the readers) will find a cogent and compelling account of how history shaped the world they inherited . . . ".

Patterson does again what he does best and that is put history in the context of a multitude of definitionally overlapping diciplines. Covering the time period of 1974-2000, without the context of a Revolutionary War (as did Robert Middlekauff in "Glorious Cause"), the Civil War (James McPherson in "Battle Cry of Freedom"), and the Great Depression and WWII (Kennedy's Freedom from Fear) - all part of this series, is exceedingly well done and presented in a fashion that most historical narrative writers would find difficult to create. It is, hence, no surprise that Patterson was chosen to write two volumes here, both recent 20th Century history, without a linchpin on which to write around. He covers the period extraordinarily well and gives the reader a very balanced view of the many facets of our history over the last thirty years.

With this book only the 5th actually published in the series, I was quite happy to learn the following. Gordon S. Wood (Brown University) will be writing on the early National era. Daniel Howe (UCLA) will be writing on the Jacksonian era. H.W. Brands (University of Texas) will be writing on the late 19th Century. Bruce Schulman (Boston University) will be writing on the Progressive era. One or two volumes (two would make the series the full eleven volumes originally envisioned) on the Colonial period apparently have yet to be assigned. While the topical volume on economic history has been scrapped, George Herring (University of Kentucky) is writing one on foreign relations and policy. These are expected out in the 2006-2007 time frame.

The entire series is a wonderful undertaking that has not received the joint acclaim it deserves. Certainly many awards have been won individually for these terrific works but I think the awareness of the series, as a whole, is much lower than is warranted by the scholarly work being put into it. I am hopeful that as more volumes are published, this quickly dissipates. Kudos to all involved in this very worthy project.

It appears as if readers are in for a treat over the next 12- 24 months with the "missing" volumes at least having manuscripts into David Kennedy (Freedom from Fear) and the series' new editor with the passing of C. Vann Woodward.

Volumes 1 and 2, covering the Colonial Period (1672-1763) have been assigned, in some order, yet to be made public (that I am aware of) to Fred Anderson (University of Colorado) and Andrew Cayton (Miami University of Ohio).

Volume 3 - The Glorious Cause 1763-89, Robert Middlekauf PUBLISHED

Volume 4 - The U.S. from 1789-1815, Gordon Wood (Brown University)

Volume 5- What Hath God Wrought 1815-48, Daniel Walker Howe (UCLA)

Volume 6- Battle Cry of Freedom, 1848-65, James McPherson PUBLISHED

Volume 7- Leviathan: America Comes of Age, 1865-1900, H.W. Brands (Texas)

Volume 8- Reawakened Nation, 1896-1929, Bruce Schulman (Boston University)

Volume 9- Freedom from Fear, 1929-1945, David M. Kennedy PUBLISHED

Volume 10- Grand Expectations, 1945-74, James T. Patterson PUBLISHED

Volume 11- Restless Giant, 1974-2000, James T. Patterson PUBLISHED

Volume 12- a complete history of American foreign policy, George Herring (Kentucky)

It appears that the Brands addition has been pulled and will not be part of the series. What will take its place is not yet known. I would speculate that Brands will be writing on this same period, just not for this series as the work was largely done. A similar event happened some time ago with Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick writing "The Age of Federalism, 1788-1800". This was originally to be part of the series but the two apparently did not go far enough chromatically for the publishers. Also John Gaddis Lewis has written extensively and was also, somehow, dropped by Oxford. All of this makes for great reading one way or another.

It is only when the history books are written that we begin to find out what really happened as opposed to reading/watching the day to day news stories in the paper/television.

This book by James Patterson, part of the Oxford history of the United States covers the years from Nixon's resignation (1974) to inauguration day 2001 when George W. Bush became President. The media tends to stress conflict. In actuality there is much less conflict than you might otherwise believe. The majority of Americans were less partisan, less attentive to political fighting than were the protestors, the politicians or the interest groups with causes to defend.

Through this quarter century, the Americans tended to elect the presidential candidate that they considered to be the most central, neither left nor right wing. Both political parties continued to be effective, holding about half of both houses of congress. The rights of racial and ethnic minorities, Catholics and Jews, the handicapped, senior citizens, women and gays all expanded. The economy expanded to have more Americans working than ever before.

This supurb book takes the immediacy out of the headlines and presents the history of our time in a well thought out, clear, and concise manner.

The Oxford History of the United States series is an amazing endeavor. The purpose of this undertaking is to provide readers with an accessible summary of major historical works in the field in engaging narratives. Two books in the series have won the Pulitzer Prize; others have won a number of important, but lesser-known book awards. Patterson, a professor emeritus at Brown University, is the only individual to write two volumes in this series. This book picks up right where Grand Expectations, his previous contribution to the series, left off. He basically advances the same argument about rights consciousness, but for a different time period.

His text is stunning. He shows his skill in interpreting vast amounts of information and putting old controversies into new lights. The 1970s were hardly as bad as people thought and the 1980s were a time of greatness as Ronald Regan dominated the decade in a way that few presidents do.

The account, however, breaks down when Patterson reaches 1990. The chapters in the second half of the book are quite uneven. Some are as brilliant and informative as the material on the 1970s. In other chapters, Patterson fails to support his thesis. His citations are often missing and fail to support his arguments. At times, Patterson comes across as little more than a journalist reporting on the news of the day.

To use a baseball term, this book is a hit and a miss. A .500 batting average is pretty good in baseball; in history it gets a four-star rating, but just barely.

I read this book for a graduate class in American history. James T. Patterson's book is a historical overview of American history, which starts with one constitutional crisis and one of America's darkest hours politically, the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and ends with another test of America's constitution, the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore, which settled the presidential election of 2000. The intervening years between these two tests to America's constitution are "a tale of national resilience and even regeneration" (xii). Patterson's book is extremely prescient at describing the socio-economic changes that took place during the period. For the political angle, Patterson does an outstanding job of providing information about new political movements that rose to power in America; however, his information on the presidential administrations during the period is scant. His lack of real in-depth analysis of the presidential administrations has much to do with the fact that most archival information has not been made available to scholars for study and comment. Patterson's book reads like a high school history textbook. Thus, Patterson's book must be looked upon as a good historical overview of the period and if one wants a more detailed history then one will need to examine other books that give a more in-depth analysis on particular events of the period.

Patterson's description, in the beginning of his book, of the changing political and cultural institutions of the 1970's is very informative and his analysis agrees with other historians such as Bruce Schulman. Every institution and its leadership was mistrusted and looked upon with great derision by many Americans. Patterson observed that this mistrust stemmed "from the media, whose leaders had become considerably more skeptical and confrontational as a result of the travails of Vietnam and Watergate, and which questioned if any authorities could be trusted" (10-11). In addition, many Americans were uncomfortable by the violence and degradation of cultural values that took place during the tumultuous times of the 1960's. By the early 1970's, violent protests in America had declined. However, culturally, Americans witnessed the rise of sexual promiscuity in society. Movie and television situation comedies were replete with sexually promiscuous themes and innuendos. In 1973, the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade made abortions legal throughout the nation. Patterson astutely showed out-of-wedlock pregnancy statistics were looked upon as a barometer by many in society to prove that cultural mores were grossly out of control. "The statistics by race were shocking: In 1970, 38 percent of black babies were illegitimate, compared to 6 percent for whites. By 1990, 67 percent of black babies were illegitimate, as opposed to 17 percent for whites" (48-49). Finally, the American economy was in decline, and neither the Ford nor Carter administrations economic remedies were able to make an effective change in America's declining economy. A new word was added to the American economic lexicon, Stagflation, a condition never before witnesses by economists, in which the growth of the economy was stagnant, unemployment was high, and inflation was rising precipitously. America's large urban areas and industrial centers In the Northeast and Midwest were in decay and became known as the Rustbelt. Jobs and industry were both moving south and west to the Sunbelt states or were moving overseas, especially to Japan, a country seen by many Americans as a rising economic superpower that would soon become economically preeminent over America. All of these challenges to America's confidence had its citizens wondering if they were witnessing the decline of America as a world power economically and politically. American moral and confidence was shaken even further when President Carter on July 15, 1979, delivered to the nation what would historically become known as his "Malaise" speech. It was a speech that created a crisis of confidence in America precipitated by the economic down turn and the energy crunch in America. Whether America would be able to survive this tear in its national fabric was a real open question for many when looking to the future.

In conclusion, Patterson's book did an excellent job in exploring the challenges posed to Americans in the 1970's and how they were met over the next two decades. He showed how activism changed in America, this time it took a noticeable turn to the right. Evangelical Christians unhappy with the moral decay of the sixties and seventies, traditional conservatives unhappy with America's decline on the world stage, and fiscal conservatives unhappy with the explosion of new government social welfare programs and rising taxes to pay for them, came together to form the "New Right" within the Republican party. In 1980, they would nominate Ronal Reagan with his boyish optimism and his message that there was nothing wrong with America that new political leadership could not fix. Reagan effectively beat Carter by asking Americans if "they were better off today than they were four years ago?" Patterson observed that the eighties and the nineties became decades of renewed American confidence in American military and foreign policy prowess as well as economic successes. The world became a safer place to live for all its inhabitants due to the nuclear arms reduction treaties brokered between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, which lead to the end of the Cold War in 1990, "with hardly a shot being fired in anger" (424). America's economy made a crucial turn for the better during the Reagan administration with economic policies instituted by Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, who choked off the nation's money supply and brought inflation down to a manageable four percent, which spurred America's economic growth once again. Greenspan would engender such confidence in his economic policies that he was asked by America's next three presidents to stay on the job. America's economic health would continue in the nineties under President Bill Clinton, a Democrat who cut taxes and government spending and proved to be more pro business than his Democratic successors. Thus, Patterson's book ends with the observation that many "citizens of the United States had conveniences, comforts, and real incomes that would have been hard to imagine in 1974" (424).

As a graduate student I recommend this book for anyone interested in Reagan, American History, Cold War History.

I've often felt that "contemporary history" is not just an oxymoron, but a fallacy as well. Good history depends on two things: information and perspective. Information, in that there are sources available that provide insight into the motivations behind decisions and events, and perspective in that there is enough distance to make an assessment of what decisions and trends truly shaped subsequent developments. Without both, the observations and conclusions made may not be inaccurate, but they are not really historical judgments.

For this reason, I approached James Patterson's book with some skepticism. It's not that I didn't think he was up to the task (his previous contribution to the series, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States), is testament to his ability to write such history), but that the task itself was in many ways a fool's errand. Yet Patterson has done an admirable job of applying a historical assessment of America during the last quarter of the twentieth century. He strikes an admirable balance in examining the political, social, and economic developments of those decades; what emerges is a portrait of America becoming more conservative politically during these decades while coming to terms with the "rights revolution" of the 1960s. I was particularly impressed with his discussion of American culture of the period, something that was sorely lacking in a couple of the earlier volumes of the series.

Nevertheless, the challenge of writing contemporary history shows in these pages. Many of the archival collections remain closed, and Patterson seems heavily dependent upon contemporary journalism in assessing events. Where his problems are particularly evident, though, is in drawing conclusions about developments. The challenge for historians is in assigning causality, to say why something happens. Too often what Patterson does is to present various explanations of events without coming to any definite conclusions himself. While such evenhandedness is admirable, it demonstrates the fundamental problem - we still don't know enough to make judicious assessments of the impact of events still within living memory. The result is best regarded as an interim account, one that will be revised in many respects as our knowledge and distance from the times grows.

This is not to diminish the author's achievement. Patterson has written a good, comprehensive survey of recent American history, easily the best one available to us today. Even readers who remember well the events Patterson describes will learn something new from this book, one that is likely to remain the standard history of the era for many years to come.

Patterson successfully presents modern history in this book in a very concise and easy to read book. It's objective for the most part, and covers the most relevent events of each decade mentioned. There is not a whole lot of detail on everything however, it is more of a summary, but it will "wet your appetite" on various topics for more detailed study. It's a pretty good history book.

Patterson delivers another smash hit in his book on the United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore. This book is a less historiography study and more of a statistical approach than other oxford books but it is nonetheless expertly presented. The analysis is top quality and the sense of how the United States became restless (especially during the 1990's is apparent. Patterson makes a good argument that we have to wait and see what effect 9/11 will have and whether or not it was the changing milestone. If you are interested in this time period this is a must read. For those who are interested in American studies this is an essential book for your library.

What I liked best about the book was sense of balance. It discussed good things and bad things about both Reagan & Clinton, the two most controversial presidents of the period. It was also a period of enormous social change, much more so than the sixties. Patterson could have made the point that the 70's were the time when the social experiments of the sixties

came to fruition.

It is said that people are less familiar with the recent past (those years during which they have lived) than they are with the history of previous generations. This book certainly made that point crystal clear to me. The book covers the years 1974-2001, during which time I grew from a young child to a parent, and I found myself marveling at the information contained in the book.

Patterson has provided us with a clear, consise history of America during this nearly 30 year period - covering everything from the social history of integration to the political turmoil surrounding Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, & Clinton, along with a brief look at the political battle that landed Bush 43 in the White House in 2001.

Although it is too early to know with any certainty the long-term historical impacts of these years, Patterson gives us a solid understanding of the trials encountered and the immediate ramifications seen.

Starting with the so-called "troubled 1970s", which seem to be nothing more than a conclusion to the activism of the 60s, we move on through the challenging Carter years (the massive economic troubles of stagflation) and into the rise of Ronald Reagan and the modern conservative movement. We see how Reagan changed the thinking of Americans and laid the groundwork for conservatism to continue evolving for the rest of the century.

Pushing through the foreign-affairs dominated presidency of Bush 41, we move quickly into the social history of immigration & race relations in the 90's. Clinton's domestic agenda and political battles offer the final chapters in the book, with a brief stop in the Supreme Court for the declaration that George Bush was to be inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone that came of age in these years - it will help you to thoroughly understand the reasons why the world you live in today developed as it did rather than simply being a continuation of the Beatnik society of the 50's, the Hippie dominated culture of the 60's, or the constant fear that pervaded American life immediately following World War II - that fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. I believe that this book will make a powerful text for the next generation when studying recent American history, and until that generation can revisit these years with another 25-30 years of review under their belt, this is probably the definitive work we will see of this time frame.

My final stop on my march through the ages is James T. Patterson's Restless Giant. This volume has a very different feel from both Patterson's previous book Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States) and from the Oxford series in general. This book is more upbeat than the previous; this could be due to the material. Grand Expectations leaves you a little emotionally down in a reflection of the disappointment of the time period. In contrast, Restless Giant is written with the optimism of the 1980s and 1990s, where America, in winning the Cold War, seemed as if it were invincible. The title of the book is a clear spin of one Admiral Yamamoto's statement of America being a sleeping giant that he had awakened by attacking Pearl Harbor. This book is also very different from the rest of the Oxford series because, unlike the earlier volumes, this book is features an era that I actually lived through. I was born in 1981, so my life begins basically in chapter 5 and the rest of the book covers the events of my youth.

The story begins in the 1970s in the aftermath of Watergate, Patterson does his best to uncover this brief little era, in which a public first supports President Gerald Ford but begins to soar towards him in as he pardons his dishonored predecessor. Ford finds himself replaced with the humorless Jimmy Carter, who in turn presides over one of the worst economies since the 1930s. In keeping the tradition of the series, Patterson explores this era from all sides. He tells the story of the ordinary people, the social trends, new gadgets, and entertainment that the people enjoyed. It is a decade I am glad to have just missed.

The 1980s and my life begin with Ronald Reagan having vanquished Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election, ushered in a new conservative era. Although Patterson points out that even though conservative politics were becoming popular it was hardly a triumph equal to the liberals in 1932. The Democrats still held the House and Reagan while eager to pay lip-service to conservative domestic polices, he was not that interested in promoting them. Reagan chose instead to focus mainly on U.S. foreign policy. Reagan's foreign policy would be credited with winning the Cold War for the United States. Patterson also discusses horrors of the era, such as, the coming of the AIDS epidemic, and some the lighter moments such as the beginning of MTV.

"Reagan, moreover, was not so doctrinaire a conservative as liberals made out. While fond of damning big government--and of denunciations of 'welfare queens'--he recognized that liberal interest groups had effective lobbies on the Hill, that major New Deal--Great Society social programs--many of them entitlements--were here to stay, and the rights-consciousness had become a powerful political force. He understood that though people said they distrusted government, they expected important services from it."(p.163)

The chapter covering the era of George H.W. Bush is known simply as 'Bush 41'. There is a strong argument to be made that of all the presidents to be featured in this book he was the most successful. Unfortunately, he will never be look at in that regard because he is cursed as a one-termer in his lost Bill Clinton in 1992. Although he had 'neo-cons' in his administration, the first President Bush was not as dominated by those view points as his son would be over a decade later.

Patterson begins to cover the nineties, which saw the end of the Industrial Age and the beginning of the Information Age. As the first baby boomer to assume the presidency, Bill Clinton gave Americans the impression that they once again had a very young Kennedy like president. Like Kennedy, he makes a lot of errors and also has his triumphs. And also like Kennedy, Patterson covers more of the former than the later. Nevertheless, I feel that Patterson gives Clinton a fair treatment.

"Extraordinarily well informed about domestic issues, Clinton had impressed many party leaders when he headed the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank that blossomed after 1989 within the ideologically centrist Democratic Leadership Council. Like a great many boomers, he liberal positions on a range of social issues such as abortion and health care, but though he had the populist touch of a campaigner, he did not position himself of the left. A moderate as governor, he distanced himself as a presidential candidate from liberals like Mondale and Dukakis, who had been badly beaten in 1984 and 1988." p.248

I was a teenager in the 1990s and my political options were beginning to form. So reading about the Clinton years was like reliving my youth in a way. Of the course the news that dominated the headlines was the Monica Lewinsky affair and the unjustified impeachment of President Clinton by his relentless partisan opponents. Clinton's behavior brought on a lot of his own misery, but his opponents' behavior was worse because they attacked not only Bill Clinton politically, but the office the President as an institution. Clinton in standing up to these attacks, I believe, ended a deterioration of power that had been chipping at the presidency since Nixon resigned*.

"If Clinton's near-legendary luck had held out--as it might have done if he had been chief executive during pre-Watergate days when reporters had turned a relatively blind eye to the promiscuity of politicians--he would have joined a number of American presidents who had engaged in extramarital relations without being publicly exposed while in office."(p.388)

The book ends with the controversial election of President George W. Bush over Vice President Al Gore. The first election that I ever voted in was one that was finished by the United States Supreme Court. I was very disappointed the time because I thought the election was outright stolen. I now, in agreeing with Patterson but having this opinion before, feel that the election had instead just fallen off a bus. (I have often thought about what might have been.)

Before ending I have to talk about this one part of a paragraph in chapter 8--the chapter that deals with the culture wars of the 1990s:

"Though many publishers and bookshops struggled to break even, fiction by highly talented authors--Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Anne Tyler, Richard Ford, John Updike, and others with smaller name recognition--sold well. So did excellently researched works of non-fiction. James McPherson's prize winning Battle Cry for Freedom (1988), a history of the Civil War era enjoyed huge sales." (p.288)

Now Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States), I believe I both read and reviewed that book. If memory serves that is the Civil War volume of the Oxford History of the United States series, which is the same series as this very book! David Kennedy, the current editor, must have yelled out 'GO TEAM' when he read those words.

All in all, this is a great book. It is interesting reading events that took place in your own life as actually history. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to know more about the time decades preceding the attacks of September 11.