Paul Starr American Contradiction review, recensie en informatie boek over revolutie en wraak van de jaren vijftig tot nu in de Verenigde Staten. Op 14 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek van Paul Starr de Amerikaanse hoogleraar sociologie en public affairs aan de Princeton Universiteit. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Paul Starr American Contradiction review en recensie

• “Anything Paul Starr writes is important to read, and this book is no exception. American Contradiction is a highly sophisticated history of the United States since the 1950s emphasizing the interplay between social movements, politics, culture, law, and social policy.” (Nelson Lichtenstein)
• “Paul Starr, one of the great chroniclers of American institutions, provides a brilliant reinterpretation of the modern political era. His book unpacks the fundamental contradictions that have haunted the body politic since the 1960s. A country born in contraction between slavery and freedom has remained at odds with itself even as the issues changed. The bold attack by the progressive project on hierarchical institutions produced an equally fierce counterattack by those who wanted to restore an imagined earlier era. American Contradiction teaches us how, far from being an anomaly, the election of Donald Trump twice to the presidency was a result of deeply-rooted political forces that had been steadily gaining strength within the Republican Party for decades. This is a must-read book for sociologists, historians, political scientists, and any reader interested in our nation’s political history.” (Julian E. Zelizer, Princeton University)
• “A thoughtful study of the push and pull from right to left and back again in the past 75 years ,,, A useful key to understanding how American politics and the American polity have become so intractably polarized.” (Kirkus Reviews)

American Contradiction

Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now

• Auteur: Paul Starr (Verenigde Staten)
• Soort boek: Amerikaanse politieke geschiedenis
• Taal: Engels
• Uitgever: Princeton University Press
• Verschijnt: 14 oktober 2025
• Omvang; 456 pagina’s
• Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
• Prijs: $ 35,00
• Boek bestellen bij: Amazon 

Flaptekst van het boek van Paul Starr over de Amerikaanse politiek

How did Americans come to elect Barack Obama—and then Donald Trump? Those choices capture what Paul Starr calls the American contradiction.

The whole truth about America, Starr argues in this new history of the United States since the 1950s, has never been contained in one consistent set of values or interests. Our nation was born in the contradiction between freedom and slavery. Today it is beset by a contradiction between a changing people and a resisting nation, a nation with entrenched institutions that have empowered those who fear the changes and look to restore an old America of their imagining.

Starr tells this history from the dual standpoints of the progressive movements that changed the American people and of the movements that emerged in response. Black Americans, he argues, served as a model minority, setting in motion America’s twentieth-century revolutions in gender as well as race and rights. With industry’s decline and the rise of economic inequality, millions of Americans have felt dispossessed and want the old America back. Trump is their revenge. American Contradiction tells the story of how 1950s America became the almost unrecognizable America of the 2020s.

Paul Starr is born 12 May 1949. He is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and founding coeditor of the American Prospect magazine. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and Bancroft Prize in American History for The Social Transformation of American Medicine. Over a half-century he has written essays and op‑eds for newspapers and magazines as well as books on America’s institutions, history, and politics.

Bijpassende boeken

• Amerikaanse geschiedenis
• Amerikaanse politiek