A thread for Rick Perlstein's THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE

Reading this now. I find these books to be oddly comforting. The parallels to whatever is going on now to, say, West Virginia in 1972 makes me think "this country has always been insane". This one, yes, but especially Nixonland. The 70s were fucking ~insane~.

Most interesting insane decade ever.

Still holding out hope for a bringing-it-all-back-home final book.

The 70s were fucking ~insane~.

Living through the 70s is what formed all the now-insane boomers.

I love when Perlstein points out the obvious about the audience for some right wing knuckle-dragging talking-point. Like here where Reagan had just recorded a long form talk-to-the-camera speech:

One reviewer -- Elizabeth Drew -- found it "rather poor. Reagan jumped from subject to subject, just as he had in his early speeches when he shuffled his 4x6 cards; he talked too fast about too many things [...]" But New Yorker writers did not have a vote in North Carolina Republican primaries.

In Nixonland, it was the opposite -- when some horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing bureaucrat would spout statistics that would lead to Perlstein would write something like "it all made so much sense" to liberals, only to have Nixon pull the rug on them again with some inanity.

Picking up The Invisible Bridge and Reaganland from my local library tomorrow. Just finishing Season 2 of Mindhunter, which mostly deals with the Atlanta child murders, so I guess late '70s/early '80s is where my brain is right now.

Picking up The Invisible Bridge and Reaganland from my local library tomorrow.

That is a lot of pages. Glad my copy of Invisible Bridge auto-renewed...twice.