Episode 43: Kevin Kruse, America’s Fault Lines

Published: Jan. 2, 2019, 10 a.m.

Kevin M. Kruse, historian at Princeton University is my guest on this episode. He’s the author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, published in 2005, and One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, published in 2015. He and his colleague at Princeton, Julian Zelizer, have a new book coming out January 9th titled Fault Lines: A History of the U.S. Since 1974. It evolved from a course taught by Kruse and Zelizer at Princeton. We talk about Fault Lines in today’s episode. 0:00 What intrigues students about this period 9:00 Network, Nashville, Wall Street, Wargames 15:20 Revisiting White Flight 20:00 Abortion politics and evangelicals 28:20 Books by Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann; and E. J. Dionne 35:30 Scorched earth politics, Obama's naive hope of bipartisanship 42:00 Preparing students for misinformation 45:00 Kevin recommends books on racism in America 51:30 Kevin's next book Links Fault Lines: A History of the U.S. Since 1974 by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian Zelizer Syllabus for the Princeton course on U.S. history since 1974 Kevin M. Kruse on Twitter Other Books by Kevin M. Kruse Other Books by Julian Zelizer's Books Books That We Discussed Neil J. Young - We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics Thomas E. Mann & Norm Ornstein - It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Political Extremism  E. J. Dionne - Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism—From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond Julian Zelizer - Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security: From World War II to the War on Terrorism George Fredrickson - Racism: A Short History John Higham - Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 Linda Gordon - The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition Donald Critchlow- Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade Books by Geoffrey Kabaservice