Description
Book SynopsisLooks back on twenty-five years of what Hodgson calls "the conservative ascendancy" in America, demonstrating how it has come to dominate American politics. This title addresses a range of issues, with chapters on politics, the economy, immigration, technology, women, race, and foreign policy, among others.
Trade Review"In More Equal Than Others, an up-to-the-minute critique of modern American life, the British historian Godfrey Hodgson combines intelligent discussions of pressures that have shaped American society during the last quarter-century ... With a factoid-packed jeremiad against the triumph of the suburb--the demographic zone where half the population now lives, where two-thirds of new jobs are located, whose voting strength overawes Congress... Although Hodgson writes as a liberal, he levels [his] charges across party lines."--Allen D. Boyer, New York Times Book Review "[A] wonderfully written, wide-ranging and profoundly depressing book. Hodgson's theme is that the US has changed for the worse in the past 25 years: inequality is supplanting equality, even equality of opportunity."--Kathleen Burk, Financial Times "[Hodgson] sees a country which the postwar liberal consensus has indeed moved right, turning free-market capitalism from an economic theory into a cultural template. The result is an America in which financial segregation increasingly preserves opportunity for a wealthy elite... [He] argues convincingly that American society has come to resemble old-fashioned Europe, with its strictly class-structured elites."--Michael Carlson, The Spectator "The most thoughtful, thorough and sorrowful book imaginable on what has happened in these years."--Bernard Crick, The Independent "Godfrey Hodgson ... delivers a relentless indictment of an American grown ... far too sure of itself. In More Equal Than Others, he argues that a wave of right-wing triumphalism has overtaken the country since the Soviet Union's death from exhaustion. In its train, it has brought us a sanctification of the unfettered market, an intensification of Americans' long-standing contempt for government, and--most appallingly--a complacent acceptance of unprecedented inequalities in wealth, education, and opportunity."--Matthew A. Crenson, Political Science Quarterly
Table of ContentsForeword ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction Disappointment and Denial xvii 1 State of the Union 1 2 New Politics 29 3 New Technology 61 4 New Economics 87 5 New Immigrants 112 6 New Women 139 7 New South, Old Race 172 8 New Society 203 9 New World 249 10 New Century 288 Notes 305 Select Bibliography 349 Index 361
