Richard Nixon And The Rise Of Conservatism, Topic Of April 13 Lecture

Chestertown, MD, April 4, 2005 — Washington College's C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience presents author and political correspondent Rick Perlstein on “Nixonland: The Politics of the American Berserk, 1965-1972,” Wednesday, April 13, at 4:30 p.m. in the College's Casey Academic Center Forum. The talk is free and open to the public.

Former chief national political correspondent for Village Voice, Perlstein has specialized in the coverage of the rise and impact of the Republican Party, the conservative movement and the Christian Right. He is the author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (Hill and Wang, 2001)—selected by The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post for their year-end “notable book” lists—and writes for The Nation, The New York Observer, The New York Times and other publications. His forthcoming biography of Richard Nixon examines Nixon's rise to power and his historic landslide election in 1972. In particular, Perlstein's talk will focus on the summer of 1966, during which the settled political wisdom of the presidential election just past—that liberalism would enjoy hegemony in America in perpetuity—began to be set on its ear.

The talk is sponsored by Washington College's C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, an innovative forum for new scholarship about American history. Drawing on the special historical strengths of Washington College and Chestertown, the Center is dedicated to exploring the early republic, the rise of democracy, and the manifold ways in which the founding era continues to shape American culture.