Reviews for The conservative decade

The average rating for The conservative decade based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-28 00:00:00 James Helton Four stars. This is an excellent history of the United States between 1945 and 2007, roughly. These years brought enormous changes to the World, and this history focuses on how those changes happened, and how they affected the American People. It's truly worth reading. The format is different from many histories I've read in that it’s a collection of essays by separate historians, rather than a single work by one or more historians. This is one of the things that makes it valuable as a history, because each essayist focuses on that facet of history their essay comprises, bringing that facet to the fore in a bite-sized portion. There are nineteen such essays in this history; that’s nineteen important facets of American history between 1945 and 2007. Very interesting. Be aware that historians can have controversial points of view. An example of such is the essay in chapter 16, Citizenship and the Problem of Desire in the Postwar Labor and Civil Rights Movements, by Thaddeus Russell. You can judge its veracity for yourself, but I’ve never read this perspective before. (I’ll not state my opinion regarding its veracity.)

Review # 2 was written on 2017-06-21 00:00:00 Brian Mahoney Alsop’s book is a collection of essays describing Washington, DC as it was in the 1960’s. Everything here was written then, so it’s a chance to jump back in time and see what the media—and this reporter in particular-- thought was appropriate for mainstream Americans reading the news of the day. I was invited to read and review this book thanks to Open Road Integrated Media and Net Galley in exchange for this honest review. I always hate to pan a book when I’ve been invited; it sounds as if I am insulting the host after eating at his table. However, the truth is the truth, and I see this title as fitting a narrow niche audience, but not so much the general public. Alsop takes us back to the time that the USSR was a country and looked as if it was going to stay that way. He refers to Latvia and Estonia as former countries. Journalists that are female are referred to as “lady reporters”, and sodomy was still a crime on which the journalist frowned and assumed we would, also. He refers to justices of the Supreme Court and elsewhere as men, and with the assumption that this also is according to nature and will never change. Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this collection is the chummy way he refers to the Miranda case, in which it was determined that those about to be charged with a crime had to be told that they had the right not to speak against themselves and to have an attorney. He explains that most of the court’s decision making was done in restaurants and over the phone long before they ever met, and so this case was “almost certainly” decided before the justices ever met in chambers. This reviewer’s father-in-law is a retired judge that served many ethical decades for the State of Oregon, ending his career on the State Court of Appeals. Talk like Alsop’s would make his blood run cold—or maybe extra hot, actually. His ethics were so firm and fair that he would not tell his own family, when we dined in the privacy of our home or his, who he planned to vote for in the upcoming election…because judges are supposed to be above partisan politics. He did not discuss his cases with family, and I would stake the deed to my house on his not having entered into any chummy agreements over the phone when serving at any level on the bench. So for those interested in the journalism of the 1960s, here’s a trip down the rabbit hole that will take you there, or at least to one version of it. Those interested in the sociology of that time period might also find this useful. Those interested in building a better world may be encouraged to see how far society has come since this dark time. If you think things are bad now, check out what they were like 50 years ago. But don’t pay full jacket price unless it’s important to you. You can have this book now if you want it.