More Equal Than Others

Godfrey Hodgson is an Associate Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. He is the author of six books, including "The Gentleman from New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Biography, People's Century", and "America In Our Time" (1976, Princeton 2005).

• Foreword 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

"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