Deeply Divided

Racial Politics and Social Movements in Post-War America

By: Doug McAdam, Karina Kloos

Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin

By many measures - commonsensical or statistical - the United States has not been more divided politically or economically in the last hundred years than it is now. How have we gone from the striking bipartisan cooperation and relative economic equality of the war years and post-war period to the extreme inequality and savage partisan divisions of today?

In this sweeping look at American politics from the Depression to the present, Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos argue that party politics alone is not responsible for the mess we find ourselves in. Instead, it was the ongoing interaction of social movements and parties that, over time, pushed Democrats and Republicans toward their ideological margins, undermining the post-war consensus in the process. The Civil Rights struggle and the white backlash it provoked reintroduced the centrifugal force of social movements into American politics, ushering in an especially active and sustained period of movement/party dynamism, culminating in today's tug of war between the Tea Party and Republican establishment for control of the GOP.

In Deeply Divided, McAdam and Kloos depart from established explanations of the conservative turn in the United States and trace the roots of political polarization and economic inequality back to the shifting racial geography of American politics in the 1960s. Angered by Lyndon Johnson's more aggressive embrace of civil rights reform in 1964, Southern Dixiecrats abandoned the Democrats for the first time in history, setting in motion a sustained regional realignment that would, in time, serve as the electoral foundation for a resurgent and increasingly more conservative Republican Party.

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This book needs to be read by every American

Open your eyes America, our Democracy is crumbling before our very eyes, being undone by party extremists This book explains how and why.

Historically accurate

The United States is divided politically, racially and socially. This division does not support the United States Constitution and the and the meaning behind The Pledge to our American flag. The only benefit of the division is to support another country that is trying to overcome and take over America. Let's get our act together and become one America. This book was well done well written and I will listen to it again.

Great book on the great divide in politics.

Loved the discussion tying health inequity to income inequity. Thanks for a great discussion on ways to increase voter turnout