Before the Storm

Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

By: Rick Perlstein

Narrated by: Kiff VandenHeuvel

“A detailed and dramatic narrative of the rise of the modern right...It's an amazing story, and Perlstein, a man of the left, does it justice” (William Kristol, The New York Times Book Review)

Before the Storm begins at the tail end of the 1950s, with America affluent, confident, and convinced that political ideology was a thing of the past.

But when John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, conservatives—editor William F. Buckley Jr., John Birch Society leader Robert Welch, and thousands of students—formed a movement to challenge the center-left consensus. They chose as their hero Barry Goldwater—a rich, handsome Arizona Republican who scorned the federal bureaucracy, reviled détente, despised liberals on sight—and grew determined to see him elected President.

Goldwater was trounced by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But by the campaign's end the consensus found itself squeezed from the left and the right; and two decades later, the conservatives had elected Ronald Reagan as President and Goldwater's ideas had been adopted by Republicans and Democrats alike.

The story of the rise of conservatism during a liberal era has never been told, and Rick Perlstein's gutsy narrative history is full of portraits of figures from Nelson Rockefeller to Bill Moyers. Perlstein argues that the 1964 election led to a key shift in U.S. politics—from concerns over threats from abroad to concerns about disorder at home; from campaigns plotted in back rooms to those staged for television.

Enthralling Tale of the Seeds of 21st Century

A riveting, accurate, and informative account of American politics in the mid-20th century, setting the stage for all that would follow. Perlstein has a storyteller's skills and an historian's respect for selecting key events and getting all perspectives. This book provides the essential but often missing context behind today's headlines. The reader for the audiobook brings the whole thing to life.

Another Perlstein tour-de-force

no one is better than Perlstein at collecting and ordering the detail with requisite nuance.

Narrator Detracts From Superb Content

Whether mispronunciations - for example, what should be South Vietnamese President Diem [dee-em] rather than Deem - to his attempts at voice impersonations, the narrator undermines the author’s superb content of what is significant history of the emergence of the Big Lie wing of national governance and campaign

Necessary to know of this context to acquire the tools needed to deconstruct the Big Lie with calm and repetitive truth

Excellent, illuminating content Mr. Perlstein!
Thank you

Fascinating view into the shape of our future

Loved this from beginning to end. This era of the US has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I know enough about Reagan to hate what he's done to us historically, but seeing the essential blueprint for the republican party was extremely interesting. Especially since Goldwater's loss is such an inevitability. You learn to understand why people fell into this rhetoric and how it began to take shape for future candidates in Nixon and Reagan.

I also gained quite an insight into LBJ, who is often not talked about. I understand the controversy of Vietnam but seeing his undying fortitude against opposition for Civil Rights and Basic Rights of all to health was refreshing. It's fascinating seeing a strong armed democrat in the age of our wildly weak willed leftist options in modernity.

Cannot wait to read more Perlstein, particularly in regards to this era of politics since it's such a turning point in our history.

Excellent but marred by narration

This book features an intriguing thesis, in-depth research, and an annoying narrator who for reasons I can’t fathom offers lame impressions of the historical figures quoted in the text. The JFK and Nixon mimicry is bad enough but the half-baked Willy Brandt about 1/3 in was too much for me. I switched to the print version.