A Time for Choosing The Rise of Modern American Conservatism [Hardcover]

How did American conservatism, little more than a collection of loosely related beliefs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, become a coherent political and social force in the 1960s? What political strategies originating during the decade enabled the modern conservative movement to flourish? And how did mainstream and extremist conservatives, frequently at odds over tactics and ideology, each play a role in reshaping the Republican Party? In the 1960s conservatives did nothing less than engineer their own revolution.A Time for Choosingtells the remarkable story behind this transformation.
Where previous accounts of conservatism's rise tend to speed from 1964 through the start of the Reagan era in 1980,A Time for Choosingexplores in dramatic detail how conservatives took immediate action following the Goldwater debacle. William F. Buckley, Jr.'s 1965 bid for Mayor of New York City and Reagan's 1966 California governor's campaign helped turn the tide for electoral conservatism. By decade's end, independent splinter groups vied for the right to bear the conservative standard into the next decade, demonstrating the movement's strength and vitality.
Although conservative ideology was not created during the 1960s, its political components were. Here, then, is the story of the rise of the modern conservative movement. Provocative and beautifully written,A Time for Choosingis a book for anyone interested in politics and history in the postwar era.

Elegantly written and persuasively argued,A Time for Choosingis destined to become a standard work in the study of modern conservatism. It is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the decline of liberalism and the dramatic shift to the right since 1960. --Steven M. Gillon, University of Oklahoma

Jonathan Schoenwald has given us a well-researched and thoroughly fair account of the growth of the modern conservative movement from 1950 to 1972, centering on the l“Å