The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power

A groundbreaking investigation of how and why, from the 18th century to the present day, American resistance to our ruling elites has vanished.

From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why?

The Age of Acquiescence seeks to solve that mystery. Steve Fraser's account of national transformation brilliantly examines the rise of American capitalism, the visionary attempts to protect the democratic commonwealth, and the great surrender to today's delusional fables of freedom and the politics of fear. Effervescent and razorsharp, The Age of Acquiescence is provocative and fascinating.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Published: 02/17/2015
ISBN: 9780316185431
Pages: 480
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.10w x 1.60d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 11/10/2014
Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2014
Booklist 12/15/2014 pg. 12
Library Journal 01/01/2015 pg. 112
New York Times Book Review 03/22/2015 pg. 12
New York Times Book Review 03/29/2015 pg. 26
Christian Century 04/29/2015 pg. 53
Choice 07/01/2015
New York Review of Books 11/05/2015 pg. 55
Booklist Editors Choice/Adult 01/01/2016 pg. 7