If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would
likely depend on your age: you might say during Barack Obama's
presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of
the 1980s and 1990s, or the "Reagan Revolution" and the the rise of the
New Right.
For leading historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, it all
starts in 1974. In that one year, the nation was rocked by one major
event after another: The Watergate crisis and the departure of President
Richard Nixon, the first and only U.S. President to resign; the winding
down of the Vietnam War and rising doubts about America's military
might; the fallout from the OPEC oil embargo that paralyzed America with
the greatest energy crisis in its history; and the desegregation busing
riots in South Boston that showed a horrified nation that our efforts to
end institutional racism were failing.
In the years that followed, the story of our own lifetimes would be
written. Longstanding historical fault lines over income inequality,
racial division, and a revolution in gender roles and sexual norms would
deepen and fuel a polarized political landscape. In Fault Lines, Kruse
and Zelizer reveal how the divisions of the present day began almost
five decades ago, and how they were widened thanks to profound changes
in our political system as well as a fracturing media landscape that was
repeatedly transformed with the rise of cable TV, the internet, and
social media.
How did the United States become so divided? Fault Lines offers a
richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer.
