Before the Storm - Softcover

From New York Times bestselling historian Rick Perlstein—“the chronicler extraordinaire of American conservatism” (Politico)—a sweeping history of the conservative movement from the 1960s through the 1980s.

In this virtuosic award-winning first volume of what The New York Times Book Review hails as “a project that is as ambitious in its way as Robert Caro’s magisterial biography of Lyndon Johnson,” bestselling historian Rick Perlstein charts the birth of the modern conservative movement in the liberal 1960s. At the forefront is Barry Goldwater, the divisive Arizona Senator known as “Mr. Conservative,” who loathed the federal government, despised liberals, and mocked peaceful coexistence with the USSR. His policies inspired a generation, but cost him the 1964 presidential election to Lyndon Johnson in what was then the largest landslide in American history.

Painstakingly researched and written with verve, Perlstein’s narrative illuminates shines a light on a whole world of conservatives and their antagonists, as well as an entire cohort of eminent politicians and thinkers, including William F. Buckley, Nelson Rockefeller, Bill Moyers, and Ronald Reagan, whose own journey to the White House began with a campaign speech delivered on Goldwater’s behalf.Before the Storm is the essential book for understanding not only the 1960s, but conservatism in America to this day.