Publication date:
16 December 2008Length of book:
280 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9780742542846
This concise history focuses on the development of American conservatism in the twentieth century up to the present. Gregory L. Schneider traces the course of a once-reactionary movement opposed to progressive reform and the New Deal and describes how it came to advance alternative policies and programs that revolutionized the shaping of domestic politics, foreign policy, and economic policy. Along the way he profiles such influential thinkers as William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, Henry Regnery, and Barry Goldwater. He also details how the decline of liberalism after the 1960s helped conservatives gain political power, and how their energized activism and organization culminated in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Schneider also describes how the years since the Reagan Revolution have been decidedly mixed for American conservatives.
Gregory L. Schneider has written an astute and absorbing contribution to the growing historical scholarship on American conservatism. In this well documented study, he demonstrates that modern conservatism has not been a static phenomenon but a supple, variegated, and resilient influence in American politics.