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American Contradiction

Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now

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American Contradiction

By: Paul Starr
Narrated by: Paul Starr, Mark Bramhall
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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.

©2025 Paul Starr (P)2025 Blackstone Publishing Americas Politics & Government United States American History Economic disparity Social justice Socialism Economic Inequality Capitalism
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I found this book to be very well written, for a start. This made it extremely accessible. Along with that the research is impeccable, reminding us all of what has come before Trumpism in case we’d forgotten that Biden had actually done quite well. But Starr answers a lot of our questions, about why then did Trump get restored.. it’s a great read, I was engrossed the whole way through.

Great work!

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