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The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power Paperback – March 1, 2016

by Steve Fraser (Author)
4 out of 5 stars 48 customer reviews
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Conservative Election Politics
Going Red: The Two Million Voters Who Will Elect the Next President--and How Conservatives Can Win Them
Going Red: The Two Million Voters Who Will Elect the Next President--and How Conservatives Can Win Them
Going Red: The Two Million Voters Who Will Elect the Next President--and How Conservatives Can Win Them
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 488 pages
  • Publisher: Basic Books; Reprint edition (March 1, 2016)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0465097790
  • ISBN-13: 978-0465097791
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #612,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsI liked the book but if I can make one criticism ...
By Emily M Kline on March 2, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
This book has a really important message in my opinion...having been born into FDRs world and then lived through the changes that came with Reagan and after him I could really relate to the points made in how our two gilded eras differ and why. I liked the book but if I can make one criticism it is that as the book gets closer to the end the prose gets awfully dense...sentences hard to decipher, allusions thick as thieves and so on, and an important message gets a bit blurred in the obscurity. Nevertheless I am glad I read it and I don't doubt I will read it again as I do with books that have a lot to say about the times I have lived in.
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5.0 out of 5 starsScary and a bit depressing — will it wake people up?
By S. J. Snyder on March 3, 2015
Format: Hardcover
Age of Acquiescence

First, Steve Fraser has a word for us to learn: “Precariat.” You can probably see the word from which this portmanteau derives, in turn riffing on “proletariat.” Yes, we are the class of the precarious.

So, why didn’t more Americans join Occupy Wall Street a few years back, or start their own, similar movements? That’s the thesis of this book.

One of the greatest strengths of this book is Chapter 10, titled “Fables of Freedom: Brand X.” Of course, branding and its adjunct, marketing, become fiercer by the day. But, as Fraser shows, their roots go back at least to the Keynesian consumerism which he marks as the real “settlement” of the New Deal and later. He’s true about this in general — American “mainstream” organized labor accepted the offer of a theoretically guaranteed piece of the capital pie on wages, health care and other benefits, while agreeing to keep its collective nose out of corporate operations, unlike in a Germany, and to also play good soldiers abroad in undermining labor movements elsewhere that wouldn’t salute the flag of high-octane American capitalism.

And so, as the Sixties drew to a close, organized labor had trouble incorporating the Vietnam generation into its ranks. Fraser even shows that many strikes of the early Seventies were wildcats, without hierarchy’s OK, and at times aimed at the hierarchy as much as the employer.

"It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the new corporations emerging out of this bazaar of buying and welling were in a new business: the fabrication of companies to trade back and forth."
— The Age of Acquiescence, p. 245.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsGreat book to understand why the American worker is suffering.
By muddyboy1 on March 10, 2015
Format: Hardcover
A densely written informational book about the relationship between the working class and the wealthy capitalists that for the most part control their economic fate. The book covers the period from the end of the Civil War to the present. The principal thesis indicated in the title is that historically workers have used strikes, violence and other means to voice their displeasure. Now, starting with the Reagan years people are working longer hours with less pay and benefits and are taking it without a whimper. Fraser gives many insightful reasons for the total domestication of the American worker most streaming from mythologies promoted to workers that the have taken hook, line and sinker from business interests and their political allies. He does wander a little off the topic from time to time.
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5.0 out of 5 stars"Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here"
By Bartleby (scrivner) on April 27, 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Five stars means you "loved" the book? No, I really hated it because it's an exhaustive analysis of the total failure of this country as a representative democracy. However that's always been the "myth" anyway and it's now clearer than ever that the emperor has no clothes, that we have always been a Republic ruled by the rich until, as during the Depression, they screwed up so bad in their greed, inhumanity, unenlightenment, and corruption that the govt.did rebel in the form of FDR and the New Deal. However that just started up again the inexorable engine of power & wealth to start the whole dismal thing all over again resulting in the Great Recession which has raised hardly any opposition and people are suffering all over but kept at bay by the need to survive and buying into the nightmare and like of the American Dream and the mollification of the American Standard of Living that just keeps people stupid.
This is a brilliantly written, exhausting, and totally depressing book and about 95% accurate in it's analysis of the dismal state of affairs in this country. But not to worry hardly anyone's going to read it and nothing will change, imagine (only 20 reviews here) when they're needs to be 5000, you got to be kidding me, see what I mean? So what difference will it make? Although it's infuriated me but I was already infuriated, anyone with a grain of sense living in this culture would be or should be but who has the time and energy to read a book like this, they're all staring mindlessly into their cell phones or trying out their latest app, and that's exactly the problem, not enough people are angry enough, or they're angry at so many things, different groups are angry for different reasons, so much so that America is a CIRCUS.Read more ›
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1.0 out of 5 starsLacks analyis, hopeless
By doug k on March 24, 2015
Format: Hardcover
3/26/2015 Does Fraser answer the question WHY we have had acquiescence in this second gilded age? I took a second look at the book to try to address this question. He seems to approach this indirectly, in fact, so indirectly that he doesn't get to the why at all. He has a lot of narrative description about what happened and the best chapter is #12 about the labor movement. This is not surprising since Fraser is a labor historian but given the purpose of the book, it is very disappointing that he really says nothing about why in any direct and convincing way. I believe this relates to his weak economic analysis. He references many economic subjects but never in very analytical ways. He seems to be so enamored with his own writing skills that he neglects the purpose of pursuing a coherent argument about the why of what happened. What were the underlying forces that broke down working class solidarity and resistance to rising inequality? There is no clue in this book. There are hints but nothing ties them together and rhetorical flourishes simply distract from the possibility of forming a conclusion. He has no discussion of any substance of either the anti Vietnam War movement or the civil rights movement, the two most important progressive movements of the period. Paul Krugman in Conscience of a Liberal argues that race and Southern conservatism related to race are the major reasons for the lack of a significant Left in this country. Fraser does not seem to subscribe to that. Higher rates of unemployment, higher participation of women and immigrants must have weakened workers' bargaining power and unions. Fraser does not discuss that clearly. The Cold War and anti-communism have been cited by others as important but Fraser has little to say about these.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 starsEloquent history, but backward-looking nostalgia and absence of...

Steve Fraser is a talented historical journalist. If you don't know much about the history of class relations in American, you can learn a lot from his lively prose. Read more

Published 10 days ago by Herbert Gintis
2.0 out of 5 starsGood intentions; wasted opportunity

I found the book boring and dull. I bought it several months ago based on an internet recommendation, but sat on it for a long time before starting to read; otherwise, I would have... Read more

Published 1 month ago by N. Peter Atnone
5.0 out of 5 starsThe future is now!

This is a great book, even if it is not uplifting.
I’m a labor activist, former Chief Steward for 12 years, an AFL/CIO labor council delegate and a former member of the... Read more

Published 2 months ago by charles t smith
3.0 out of 5 starsWho needs to resist; we are free

In this rambling, repetitious, tedious book the author, a labor historian, seeks to explain the reason for the relative absence of protests to the impacts of modern capitalism in... Read more

Published 3 months ago by J. Grattan
4.0 out of 5 starsWhy America Takes It

In "The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power," Steve Fraser, a historian who specializes in Wall Street and the... Read more

Published 4 months ago by strategy+business
1.0 out of 5 starsHe should have just penned a novel

I was unaware the works of non-fiction could contain this many adjectives and be taken seriously. Perhaps the author should just acquiesce and write a novel like he so clearly... Read more

Published 4 months ago by Will
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

disconcerting but important topic

Published 6 months ago by Janet Roseblatt
5.0 out of 5 starsWant to know why the kids are not in the streets like 1968? Want to...

Want to know why Trump is doing so well? Want to know why the kids are not in the streets like 1968? Want to know why the US is in debt and conducting bankrupting wars? Read more

Published 6 months ago by DUSA
4.0 out of 5 starsThe writing style is involuted with super long sentences and a psuedo...

A thorough historical review of the clash between the Wall Street Captains of industries
and labor during the 1800s, and post World War periods. Read more

Published 7 months ago by William Ruehmann
5.0 out of 5 starsIn depth exposition about the consumer mire that surrounds and is...

Exceptionally insightful and well-written exposition of why everything is for sale or plastered with ads and how we bought into it, literally.

Published 7 months ago by VEWSmith

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