The World Turned Inside Out explores American thought and culture in the
formative moment of the late twentieth century in the aftermath of the
fabled Sixties. The overall argument here is that the tendencies and
sensibilities we associate with that earlier moment of upheaval
decisively shaped intellectual agendas and cultural practices-from the
all-volunteer Army to the cartoon politics of Disney movies-in the 1980s
and 90s. By this accounting, the so-called Reagan Revolution was not
only, or even mainly, a conservative event. By the same accounting, the
Left, having seized the commanding heights of higher education, was
never in danger of losing the so-called culture wars. At the end of the
twentieth century, the argument goes, the United States was much less
conservative than it had been in 1975. The book takes supply-side
economics and South Park equally seriously. It treats Freddy Krueger,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Ronald Reagan as comparable cultural
icons.