The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution

Kuhn, David Paul

ISBN 10: 0190064714 / ISBN 13: 9780190064716

Published by Oxford University Press, 2020

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0000344715

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0190064714
• ISBN 13: 9780190064716
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

One of the New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2020."
"Perhaps the best book ever on how Democrats lost the white working class." 
-James Carville
                              
In May 1970, four days after Kent State, construction workers chased students through downtown Manhattan, beating scores of protestors bloody. As hardhats clashed with hippies, it soon became clear that something larger was happening; Democrats were at war with themselves.
     In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story--how chaotic it was, when it began, when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed. It was unthinkable one generation before: FDR's "forgotten man" siding with the party of Big
Business and, ultimately, paving the way for presidencies from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.
   In the shadow of the half-built Twin Towers, on the same day the Knicks rallied against the odds and won their first championship, we relive the schism that tore liberalism apart. We experience the tumult of Nixon's America and John Lindsay's New York City, as festering division explodes into violence. Nixon's advisors realize that this tragic turn is their chance, that the Democratic coalition has collapsed and that "these, quite candidly, are our people now."
     In this nail-biting story, Kuhn delivers on meticulous research and reporting, drawing from thousands of pages of never-before-seen records. We go back to a harrowing day that explains the politics of today. We experience the battle between two tribes fighting different wars, soon to become different Americas, ultimately reliving a liberal war that maimed both sides. We come to see how it all was laid bare one brutal day, when the Democratic Party's future was bludgeoned by its past, as if it was a last gasp to say that we once mattered too.

About the Author

David Paul Kuhn is a writer, investigative reporter and political analyst living in New York City. He is the author of, most recently, "THE HARDHAT RIOT: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution," which the New York Times named one of the "100 Notable Books of 2020." This "riveting book" (Jill Lepore, The New Yorker) is "engrossing, well-crafted ... sharp" (Washington Post book review), a "crucial" book on the "split between a well-educated elite and an increasingly discontented working class" (Tom Edsall, New York Times), and is "perhaps the best book ever on how Democrats lost the white working class" (political strategist James Carville).

Kuhn has held senior writing positions across the political-media landscape, from Politico to CBSnews.com. He has also written for The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post Magazine, New Republic, National Review, and Los Angeles Times, among others, and regularly appeared on networks ranging from BBC to Fox News. As the Macmillan Speakers Bureau described him, "David Paul Kuhn is an expert analyst of presidential and gender politics." He is also the author of the political novel "What Makes It Worthy" ("A love story and an exposé on modern American campaigns," Kirkus) and "The Neglected Voter" ("A brilliantly insightful analysis of American politics," General Wes Clark).

Kuhn has covered four presidential campaigns and politics from Washington to the United Nations, and driven across the United States for CBS News documenting Americans' lives and outlooks. He has reported on events from the epicenter of the collapse of the World Trade Center to North Korean backroom nuclear negotiations. Earlier in his career, he reported on the United States for the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Shimbun, the world's most widely circulated newspaper.

- Read more about him: DavidPaulKuhn.com. He can be reached at DPK4Media@Gmail.com