Rick Perlstein

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American historian and journalist (born 1969)

title: "Rick Perlstein" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1969-births", "living-people", "20th-century-american-biographers", "20th-century-american-historians", "20th-century-american-jews", "20th-century-american-journalists", "20th-century-american-male-writers", "21st-century-american-biographers", "21st-century-american-historians", "21st-century-american-jews", "21st-century-american-journalists", "21st-century-american-male-writers", "20th-century-american-male-journalists", "american-male-non-fiction-writers", "american-political-journalists", "american-political-writers", "american-reform-jews", "historians-from-illinois", "historians-from-wisconsin", "historians-of-the-united-states", "illinois-democrats", "jewish-american-historians", "jewish-american-journalists", "journalists-from-illinois", "the-new-republic-people", "people-from-bayside,-wisconsin", "people-from-fox-point,-wisconsin", "political-historians", "university-of-chicago-alumni", "university-of-michigan-alumni", "the-village-voice-people", "writers-from-chicago", "writers-from-milwaukee", "journalists-from-milwaukee", "right-wing-politics-in-the-united-states", "21st-century-american-male-journalists"] description: "American historian and journalist (born 1969)" topic_path: "politics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perlstein" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American historian and journalist (born 1969) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox writer"]

FieldValue
imageRick-Perlstein-seated-at-a-piano-selecting-music-March-2013.png
altPerlstein seated at a baby grand piano, selecting music to play from a book of jazz standards, Chicago, 2013.
caption[Chicago: 2013]
birth_date
birth_placeMilwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
educationUniversity of Chicago (BA)
University of Michigan (MA)
occupation
subjectConservatism in the United States
period1994–present
::

| image = Rick-Perlstein-seated-at-a-piano-selecting-music-March-2013.png | alt = Perlstein seated at a baby grand piano, selecting music to play from a book of jazz standards, Chicago, 2013. | caption = [Chicago: 2013] | birth_date = | birth_place = Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S. | education = University of Chicago (BA) University of Michigan (MA) | occupation = | subject = Conservatism in the United States | period = 1994–present

Rick Perlstein (born September 3, 1969) is an American historian, writer and journalist who has garnered recognition for his chronicles of the post-1960s American conservative movement. The author of five bestselling books, Perlstein received the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History for his first book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. Politico has dubbed him "a chronicler extraordinaire of modern conservatism."

Early life and education

Perlstein was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a Reform Jewish family, the second child of Jerold and Sandra (née Friedman) Perlstein.{{cite magazine |last=Perlstein |first=Rick |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/my-crisis-of-zionism-and-ours-20120502 |access-date=December 23, 2015 |magazine=Rolling Stone |title=On the Crisis of Zionism |date=May 2, 2012}} His father ran Bonded Messenger Service, a delivery company founded by his grandfather in 1955. Perlstein grew up in the Bayside and Fox Point neighborhoods of suburban Milwaukee, taking cross-country trips with his parents and siblings to national landmarks like Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park. In high school, upon earning his driver's license, Perlstein would head to Renaissance Books in downtown Milwaukee, and spend hours in its basement among stacks of old magazines from the 1960s. He later recounted in an interview: "I ended up getting my own archive on the 1960s culture wars. That's where it started." He also wrote in Rolling Stone: "A sixties obsessive since childhood, I misspent my teenage years prowling a ramshackle five-story used-book warehouse that somehow managed ... to stay one step ahead of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's building inspectors." Following graduation from Nicolet High School, Perlstein attended the University of Chicago, earning a bachelor's degree in history in 1992. While at the University of Chicago – years Perlstein described as "delightfully noisy and dissident", and a stark contrast to the suburbia of his youth, which "felt like a jail" – he was able to engage with and catch neighborhood jam sessions.

Career

After graduate study in American studies at the University of Michigan, Perlstein moved to New York in 1994, settling in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. While in New York, Perlstein interned at Lingua Franca, a magazine about academic and intellectual life, where he would become an associate editor. Perlstein also began writing book reviews, for publications like The Nation and Slate. It was Perlstein's 1996 Lingua Franca essay "Who Owns the Sixties?" that won him public notice, by exposing the emerging chasm between older and younger historians. The essay also aroused the attention of a literary agent and soon after earned him a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In December 2023, Perlstein was hired by The American Prospect to contribute a weekly column/email newsletter on media criticism, history and the 2024 United States elections, titled The Infernal Triangle.

Chronicle of modern American conservatism

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Barry_Goldwater_photo1962.jpg" caption="Barry Goldwater (1962)"] ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Nixon's_the_One!_(Portrait)_1968.png" caption="Richard Nixon Election poster (1968)"] ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Ronald_Reagan_with_cowboy_hat_12-0071M_edit.jpg" caption="Ronald Reagan (1976)"] ::

, Perlstein had published four notable books on the subject of modern American conservatism.

''Before the Storm'' (2001)

In 1997, Perlstein began work on a history of the rise of Barry Goldwater, a transformative event for the conservative movement. Perlstein's book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, was released in 2001 to widespread acclaim, including a laudatory review in The New York Times by William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard. Kristol wrote of Before the Storm, "It's an amazing story, and Perlstein, a man of the left, does it justice." Perlstein won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. Soon after, Perlstein moved from New York to Chicago. Perlstein was the national political correspondent for The Village Voice from 2003 to 2005, and contributed articles to publications that included The New York Times, The New Republic and The American Prospect.

Beginning in spring 2007 through 2009 Perlstein was a Senior Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future where he wrote for its blog The Big Con about the failures of conservative governance. A co-director at the Campaign for America's Future once noted, "Rick was unique. … I don't know when he sleeps."

''Nixonland'' (2008)

Main article: Nixonland

In May 2008, Perlstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America was published to rave reviews. In his review, the conservative columnist George Will credited Perlstein having "a novelist's, or perhaps an anthropologist's, eye for illuminating details" and called Nixonland "compulsively readable." At the end of 2008, The New York Times included Nixonland among its notable books. In 2009, The A.V. Club included it among the best books of the decade.

''The Invisible Bridge'' (2014)

In August 2014, Simon & Schuster published The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. In his New York Times review, Frank Rich wrote that the tome was "a Rosetta stone for reading America and its politics today." The Invisible Bridge received favorable reviews from The New Yorker, Slate, and The Washington Post among others.

''Reaganland'' (2020)

In August 2020, Perlstein published a book narrating the events of the four years up to and including Ronald Reagan's victorious presidential race against incumbent Jimmy Carter in November 1980. Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976–1980 is Perlstein's longest publication at almost 1,200 pages; he labeled it his final book aimed at answering the question: "How did the United States devolve from a country where Barry Goldwater was trounced in the 1964 presidential election to one where Reagan, his ideological heir, triumphed just sixteen years later?"

The book received favorable reviews from The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, and The New Republic. Reaganland was one of the New York Times 100 Notables Books of 2020. It was also subject to a scathing critique in Commentary by Steven F. Hayward, himself an author of a two-part volume on Reagan.

Plagiarism allegations

Conservative author and public relations consultant Craig Shirley has alleged that The Invisible Bridge stole distinctive words and phrasing from his 2004 book, Reagan's Revolution. Perlstein's supporters regarded the criticism as a partisan attack. Responding to numerous complaints, Times public editor Margaret Sullivan dismissed the plagiarism allegations as a "smear" and criticized the reporting for "conferr[ing] a legitimacy on the accusation it would not otherwise have had."

Responding to letters from Shirley and his attorneys, Perlstein's publisher, Simon & Schuster, stated that the claims of plagiarism "ignored the most basic principle of copyright law." Those same letters from Shirley's attorneys demanded that Simon & Schuster pay Shirley $25 million in damages, pull all copies of The Invisible Bridge and take out ads of apology in various publications. If these demands weren't met, the letters promised that a lawsuit would be filed on July 30, 2014, nearly a week before the book was to be released on August 5. On August 9, 2014, it was reported that there was no evidence a lawsuit had ever been filed. For his part, Perlstein said, "Mr. Shirley has sued me for $25 million and tried to keep people from reading my book; I've told everyone to read his book."

Bibliography

References

References

  1. "Rick Perlstein." ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2015. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, May 3, 2017.
  2. Coolican, J. Patrick. (May 15, 2008). "Historian bridges left-right divide".
  3. [[George Packer. Packer, George]] (August 11, 2014). "[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/11/uses-division The Uses of Division: Rick Perlstein chronicles the fall of the American consensus and the rise of the right]". ''The New Yorker''. Retrieved 2017-05-03.
  4. "Book Prizes – 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Winners". Los Angeles Times.
  5. "Obituary: Jerold Irving Perlstein {{!}} SummitDaily.com".
  6. "Perlstein planned, traveled and pursued everything he loved".
  7. Saltoun-Ebin, Jason. (August 5, 2014). "'The Invisible Bridge': 10 or So Questions with Rick Perlstein".
  8. Perlstein, Rick (2012-03-16). "[https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-conservatives-are-still-crazy-after-all-these-years-20120316 Why Conservatives Are Still Crazy After All These Years]. ''Rolling Stone''. rollingstone.com. Retrieved 2017-05-04.
  9. "Rick Perlstein". Huffpost. huffingtonpost.com.
  10. "The New York Times Magazine College Essay Contest".
  11. Steininger, Judith. "Books – Mequon native Rick Perlstein".
  12. Adams, Lucas. (June 20, 2014). "Reagan Rising: Rick Perlstein".
  13. Perlstein, Rick. (March 4, 1996). "Infinite Jest". The Nation.
  14. Perlstein, Rick. (November 5, 1997). "Boston vs. Austin". Slate.
  15. Warren, James. (May 24, 1996). "Historians Duke It Out Over The '60s".
  16. (December 2023). "David Dayen talks with Rick Perlstein about his new column for TAP".
  17. Perlstein, Rick. (December 28, 2023). "Subject: 📣 A Message from Rick Perlstein (The American Prospect newsletter)".
  18. Kristol, William. (April 1, 2001). "In His Heart, He Knew He Was Right". The New York Times.
  19. "Book Prizes – Los Angeles Times Festival of Books» Winners By Award". Los Angeles Times.
  20. [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-perlstein Rick Perlstein Biography], ''[[Huffington Post]]''
  21. [http://www.ourfuture.org/user/6/full Biography], [[Campaign for America's Future]]
  22. Henderson, Harold. (2016). "Sympathy for the Devil?". Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
  23. Packer, George. (May 19, 2008). "The Fall of Conservatism".
  24. "Our favorite books of 2008". The AV Club.
  25. Wernecke, Ellen. "Rick Perlstein: Nixonland". The AV Club.
  26. Douthat, Ross. (May 2008). "E Pluribus Nixonw".
  27. "A Nation Divided In 'Nixonland'". NPR.org.
  28. Sugrue, Thomas J.. (August 13, 2008). "Rick Perlstein's 'Nixonland': A Gripping Look at the Nixon Era". The Nation.
  29. Will, George F.. (May 11, 2008). "Bring Us Apart". The New York Times.
  30. (December 7, 2008). "100 Notable Books of 2008". The New York Times.
  31. "The best books of the '00s". The AV Club.
  32. Rich, Frank. (July 31, 2014). "'The Invisible Bridge,' by Rick Perlstein". The New York Times.
  33. (August 18, 2020). "Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976–1980". Simon and Schuster.
  34. Smith, Jordan Michael. (August 17, 2020). "When Conservatism Triumphed".
  35. Gardner, John S.. (August 16, 2020). "Reaganland review: Rick Perlstein on Carter's fall and the rise of the right".
  36. Metcalf, Stephen. (October 8, 2020). "Review: How Reagan and the finance bros gave us Trump". Los Angeles Times.
  37. Iber, Patrick. "How the GOP Became the Party of Resentment".
  38. (November 20, 2020). "100 Notable Books of 2020". The New York Times.
  39. Hayward, Steven F.. (October 19, 2020). "No Perls of Wisdom". Commentary.
  40. (August 4, 2014). "Reagan Book Sets Off Debate". The New York Times.
  41. (August 12, 2014). "Was an Accusation of Plagiarism Really a Political Attack?". The New York Times.
  42. (August 8, 2014). "Reagan Biographer Claims 'Copyright Infringement' Because Another Biographer Used The Same Facts".
  43. Kurson, Ken. (August 8, 2014). "The Paris Review Toasts Rick Perlstein's New Book, The Invisible Bridge".

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