Rick Perlstein

Rick Perlstein

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Rick Perlstein is the author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, which will be published by Scribner on May 13, 2008. His first book, Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Award for history. It appeared on the best books lists that year of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune, and also achieved the status, in the wake of the Clinton Wars and the 2000 Florida recount, as one of the very rare books to receive glowing reviews in both left-wing and right-wing publications. From the summer of 2003 until 2005 he covered the presidential campaigns as chief national political correspondent for the Village Voice. He has also published The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party, an essay with responses from commentators including Robert Reich, Elaine Kamarck, and Ruy Teixeira. In 2006 and 2007 he wrote a biweekly column for The New Republic Online. Perlstein is now senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, for whom he writes the blog The Big Con.



He received a B.A. in history from the University of Chicago in 1992, where his cultural criticism was published in the Baffler, and spent two years in the PhD program in American culture at the University of Michigan. Moving to New York, he worked for two years as an editor at Lingua Franca: The Review of Academic Life; while at Lingua Franca. Perlstein's freelance book reviews and essays have appeared in publications including _Slate, the Village Voice, Newsday and The Nation. His work later appeared in The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Arizona Republic, the London Review of Books, Newsday, Columbia Journalism Review and The New Yorker.



In 1998 Perlstein met his future wife, Kathy Geier. In the fall of 2002 they moved to Chicago, where Geier is pursuing a Ph.D. in public policy.

Blog Entries by Rick Perlstein

Enemies of State

0 Comments | Posted December 15, 2010 | 10:45 AM

Historically, nothing has terrified conservatives so much as efficient, effective, activist government. "A thoroughly first-rate man in public service is corrosive," the former president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued in an interview published in the journal Nation's Business in 1928. "He eats holes in our liberties. The better...

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Some Apocalyptic Observations on the Democratic Nomination Fight from Here on Out

0 Comments | Posted March 5, 2008 | 3:32 PM

A young friend who lives in a small town in a rural state sent me the following observation today:

If the Clintons push for the win in Denver, they're going to split the goddamn party down the middle. I read your chapter on 1968 Chicago, obviously. I'm of the generation...
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Historians' Open Letter to ABC

0 Comments | Posted September 8, 2006 | 3:19 PM

A group of leading American historians today sent the following letter to Mr. Robert Iger of ABC. Stressing the significance of the "traumatic" events of 9/11, the signers of this letter are calling on Mr. Iger to stand up for responsible media treatments of such important historical moments and withdraw...

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'I Didn't Like Nixon Until Watergate': The Conservative Movement Now

0 Comments | Posted December 5, 2005 | 7:40 PM

This past weekend, Princeton University presented the conference "The Conservative Movement: Its Past, Present, and Future." The sponsor, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, advertises itself "an independently funded center...[s]tarted by the courageous and interpid Robert P. 'Robby' George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence in Princeton's Politics...

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