Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

Abstract

This is a fun book. It is hard to resist a story that includes appearances by the Young Americans for Freedom, the Merry Pranksters, the Boston Strangler, the free speech movement, the National Indignation Convention, and Mothers for a Moral America (although overlooked is a satirist's variant, Virgin Mothers for a Moral America). Rick Perlstein has written a compelling narrative of Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign of 1964. He has a gift for the illuminating anecdote and also for combining the panoramic with the particular. Too young to rely on memory, he has interviewed several of those who participated in the events discussed and mastered an awesome array of primary and secondary sources, and he communicates his vision in vivacious prose. One of his qualities is a sensitivity to the quotidian, an awareness of the particular considerations crowding in on the actors at any given time. Another is his skillful development of his argument.