Word: perlstein
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Perlstein’s greatest strength is his ability to craft a good narrative—even if, at 516 pages, Before the Storm is a whopper. In the book’s opening chapters Perlstein nicely depicts the Arizona cowboy milieu from which Goldwater emerged, even as he reinforces the emphasis the stately senator placed on duty throughout his life. It’s also a narrative that expertly explores the political landscape of the times. Despite his own leftist views, Perlstein carefully manages to leave his personal political biases out of the story, giving the reader an enjoyable...
...written, could have been significantly shorter and just as effective. If a politician was militant and conservative in the postwar era, the reader quickly learns, then he was automatically labeled another “Hitler.” While driving to work, Charlton Heston suddenly converts to Goldwaterism. Writes Perlstein, “Looking up at an ‘In Your Heart, You Know He’s Right’ billboard at a Sacramento intersection, road-to-Damascus-style, on the way to a movie shoot, he thought to himself, ‘Son of a bitch...
...Goldwater anecdotes, while entertaining, mask a major problem in the book. Perlstein describes a fantastic universe of characters and personalities, including a bipolar LBJ and a young, liberal David Horowitz, but too often he goes off on long tangents, leaving Goldwater to simply make occasional appearances from his surreal airplane. After Goldwater’s rise to fame, we see very little of his inner thoughts, which is odd, considering that he is the book’s main character. Instead, we are treated to exquisite explorations of LBJ’s anxieties, Nixon’s cunning political ploys...
...ends with the media’s contemporaneous judgment on the Goldwater debacle, as the two leading political analysts of the time predict that if the Republicans again nominated a conservative, their candidate would lose so badly that it would put an end to a competitive two-party system. Perlstein concludes, “At that there seemed nothing more to say. It was time to close the book.” Goldwater’s post-1964 life, and how the Republican Party was able to make such a quick and remarkable recovery, are barely touched upon. Despite Perlstein?...
...Rick Perlstein...