American Contradiction

Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and founding coeditor of the American Prospect magazine. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and Bancroft Prize in American History for The Social Transformation of American Medicine. Over a half-century he has written essays and op‑eds for newspapers and magazines as well as books on America’s institutions, history, and politics.

“This is the best book I’ve read that takes on and explicates that seemingly unanswerable question [how to make sense of recent American history]. On almost every page, I learned something new, or saw something in a novel way that helped my understanding of [everything].”—Greg Olear, Prevail (podcast)“[A] thoughtful study of the push and pull from right to left and back again in the past 75 years. . . . A useful key to understanding how American politics and the American polity have become so intractably polarized.”—Kirkus Reviews“Paul Starr, one of the great chroniclers of American institutions, provides a brilliant reinterpretation of the modern political era. His book unpacks the fundamental contradictions that have haunted the body politic since the 1960s. A country born in contraction between slavery and freedom has remained at odds with itself even as the issues changed. The bold attack by the progressive project on hierarchical institutions produced an equally fierce counterattack by those who wanted to restore an imagined earlier era. American Contradiction teaches us how, far from being an anomaly, the election of Donald Trump twice to the presidency was a result of deeply-rooted political forces that had been steadily gaining strength within the Republican Party for decades. This is a must-read book for sociologists, historians, political scientists, and any reader interested in our nation’s political history.”—Julian E. Zelizer, Princeton University, and author of In Defense of Partisanship“American Contradiction is an extraordinarily instructive analysis of the perplexing character of the United States. Starr’s commentary on the journey from Eisenhower to Trump bristles with insight. As I read, I found myself constantly underlining his informative and accessible text.”—Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and author of Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture“A fascinating examination of the clash between changing family, gender, and sexual norms, racial justice struggles, rightwing political campaigns, and accelerating economic inequality that underlies our current political crises. Eye-opening.”—Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap“Anything Paul Starr writes is important to read, and this book is no exception. American Contradiction is a highly sophisticated history of the United States since the 1950s emphasizing the interplay between social movements, politics, culture, law, and social policy.”—Nelson Lichtenstein, coauthor of A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism