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Title details for Against the Wind by Neal Gabler - Available

Against the Wind

Edward Kennedy and the Rise of Conservatism, 1976-2009

by Neal Gabler
Joe Barrett
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New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • From the author of Catching the Wind comes the second volume of the definitive biography of Ted Kennedy and a history of modern American liberalism.
“Magisterial . . . an intricate, astute study of political power brokering comparable to Robert A. Caro’s profile of Lyndon Johnson in Master of the Senate.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Against the Wind completes Neal Gabler’s magisterial biography of Ted Kennedy, but it also unfolds the epic, tragic story of the fall of liberalism and the destruction of political morality in America. With Richard Nixon having stilled the liberal wind that once propelled Kennedy’s—and his fallen brothers’—political crusades, Ted Kennedy faced a lonely battle. As Republicans pressed Reaganite dogmas of individual freedom and responsibility and Democratic centrists fell into line, Kennedy was left as the most powerful voice legislating on behalf of those society would neglect or punish: the poor, the working class, and African Americans.
Gabler shows how the fault lines that cracked open in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam were intentionally widened by Kennedy’s Republican rivals to create a moral vision of America that stood in direct opposition to once broadly shared commitments to racial justice and economic equality. Yet even as he fought this shift, Ted Kennedy’s personal moral failures in this era—the endless rumors of his womanizing and public drunkenness and his bizarre behavior during the events that led to rape accusations against his nephew William Kennedy Smith—would be used again and again to weaken his voice and undercut his claims to political morality.
Tracing Kennedy’s life from the wilderness of the Reagan years through the compromises of the Clinton era, from his rage against the craven cruelty of George W. Bush to his hope that Obama would deliver on a lifetime of effort on behalf of universal health care, Gabler unfolds Kennedy’s heroic legislative work against the backdrop of a nation grown lost and fractured. In this outstanding conclusion to the saga that began with Catching the Wind, Neal Gabler offers his inimitable insight into a man who fought to keep liberalism alive when so many were determined to extinguish it. Against the Wind sheds new light both on a revered figure in the American Century and on America’s current existential crisis.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 15, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593418048
      • File size: 1350256 KB
      • Duration: 46:53:01

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from August 15, 2022
      Ted Kennedy (1932–2009) spent the second half of his life fighting for liberalism against a gale of conservative politics, according to the magisterial conclusion (after Catching the Wind) to Gabler’s two-volume biography of the Massachusetts senator. Surveying Kennedy’s career from the 1970s onward as the postwar liberal consensus gave way to the harsh conservatism of Ronald Reagan and the tepid centrism of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Gabler styles his subject a legislative genius who expertly manipulated the “chemistry” of senatorial relationships to advance liberal initiatives on health care, civil rights, education, and immigration. An intricate, astute study of political power brokering comparable to Robert Caro’s profile of Lyndon Johnson in Master of the Senate, the book is also an elegy for the Camelot liberalism Kennedy personified in both his advocacy for the downtrodden and the scandals and louche amorality his detractors—somewhat unfairly, Gabler argues—tarred him with. Though massive, it’s engrossing thanks to Gabler’s elegant, evocative prose (“When really got on a roll, when he was jabbing an opponent in faux indignation, and his voice rose even higher, sometimes trilling in exaggerated astonishment at the opponent’s transgressions... he could bring a crowd to its feet.”). This smart, illuminating, and stirring portrait of a liberal champion fascinates. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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