Gabler shows how the fault lines that cracked open in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam were intentionally widened by Kennedy’s Republican rivals to create a moral vision of America that stood in direct opposition to once broadly shared commitments to racial justice and economic equality.

As Republicans pressed Reaganite dogmas of individual freedom and responsibility and Democratic centrists fell into line, Kennedy was left as the most powerful voice legislating on behalf of those society would neglect or punish: the poor, the working class, and African Americans. With Richard Nixon having stilled the liberal wind that once propelled Kennedy’s-and his fallen brothers’-political crusades, Ted Kennedy faced a lonely battle. Highly recommended!”-Douglas BrinkleyĪgainst the Wind completes Neal Gabler’s magisterial biography of Ted Kennedy, but it also unfolds the epic, tragic story of the fall of liberalism and the destruction of political morality in America.

“A landmark study of Washington power politics in the twentieth century in the Robert A. From the author of Catching the Wind comes the second volume of the definitive biography of Ted Kennedy and a history of modern American liberalism.

Neal gabler catching the wind