June 17, 1972.
It was the day of my marriage. By our first anniversary, the date had another meaning: the date of the Watergate break-in.
As a girl, I had seen America come together with the assassination of President Kennedy and divide over the war in Viet Nam. The sounds of my teenage years were the chants of "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today," and the music of Woodstock.
I finished my education, worked, had a child, sent him to college, saw him settle in work and a house, and retired against the backdrop of a further dividing America.
Fault Lines condenses history into paragraphs, each event eliciting a memory. I remembered it all. And the more I read the angrier I became.
In under 400 pages, Kevin M. Kruse and Justin E. Zelizer have compacted American political, social, and media history into a readable narrative.
For me, it was a condensation of memories. I had to wonder how a younger reader would respond. The authors are historians and Princeton University professors. They have taught this history to students.
This is a history book and not an offering of solutions; there are plenty of current books that address where to go from here. The authors state that the challenge is to "harness the intense energy that now drives us apart and channel it once again toward creating new and stronger bridges that can bring us together."
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| Gridlock, a traditional Democrat Donkey quilt block by Dustin Cecil |
But so far, those leaders who endeavored to bridge the gap and pledge bipartisanship failed. There is no indication that the old fashioned values cherished in the past--working together for the common good, obeying the rule of law and custom, communicating, finding common ground--are reemerging. Instead, political leaders are ignoring the will of the majority, engineering ways to disenfranchise groups, with special interest group money buying political clout.
We are told that by knowing the past we can plan for the future, understanding our errors we can proactively prevent the repetition of those errors. I know that America has gone astray many times in our brief history, and the countering movements arighted our ship of state. It is my 'glass half full' hope.
I received an ARC from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.
About the authors:
Kevin M. Kruse is a Professor of History at Princeton University. He specializes in the political, social, and urban/suburban history of twentieth-century America, with a particular interest in conflicts over race, rights and religion and the making of modern conservatism.
Julian E. Zelizer has been one of the pioneers in the revival of American political history and is a frequent commentator in the international and national media on political history and contemporary politics. He has published over seven hundred op-eds, including his weekly column on CNN.Com.
Fault Lines: A History of the United Staes Since 1974
by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer
W. W. Norton
$28.95 hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-393-08866-3
