RICK PERLSTEIN
Monday, May 12 at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall Seattle, 1119 Eighth Avenue

Co-presented with the TOWN HALL CENTER FOR CIVIC LIFE. Prize-winning historian Rick Perlstein, whose earlier book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, charted the landscape-altering effect of Barry Goldwater and those who followed him, now turns his eye to the Richard Nixon era. Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of a Country (Scribner) shows how formative actions taken during the Nixon era are yet for the country today. "Perlstein provides a compelling account of Richard Nixon as a masterful harvester of negative energy, turning the turmoil of the 1960s into a ladder to political notoriety. Perlstein's key narrative begins at the time of the Watts riots, in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson's overwhelming 1964 victory ... demonstrates the many ways Nixon used riots, anti-Vietnam War protests, the drug culture and other displays of unrest as an easy relief against which to frame his pitch for his narrow win of 1968 and landslide victory of 1972 ... In this way, says Perlstein, Nixon created a new dividing line in the rhetoric of American political life that remains with us today." – Publishers Weekly. $5 at the door (no advance tickets), with preferred seating for Town Hall members. Town Hall Seattle is located at 1119 Eighth Avenue (entry downstairs on Seneca Street). For more information, please see www.townhallseattle.org, or call (206) 652-4255, or Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600.

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