The early twentieth century was a roller-coaster ride in American politics, swinging wildly in the early decades from the new nationalist progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt through the constitutional conservatism of William Howard Taft to the liberal internationalism of Woodrow Wilson, and then to the social and business conservatism of the 1920s. With Franklin Roosevelt, it rose steadily on the rails of a new liberalism of a positive and interventionist state at home and abroad that reached its zenith in the Great Society of the 1960s, then plunged downward and took a sharp turn to the right before completing the ride of the century.

In America Transformed, Richard Abrams chronicles the last sixty years of this ride with a primary focus on the 1960s and their aftermath. There is almost nothing of a factual nature in this work that one has not encountered before and often in greater depth and detail, as the author acknowledges at the outset. But the work is not merely a rehash of other studies, a pasting together of quotes, but rather a spirited, at once passionate and dispassionate, analysis of American government and politics since 1941. In a blurb on the jacket cover of the hardback edition, Walter A. McDougall of the University of Pennsylvania describes the book correctly as “both autopsy and eulogy for the liberal vision of what America might have become.” At the same time, it is not a paean to liberalism past, but a wide‑ranging and nuanced analysis of its successes, the ways in which many of its successes were turned against it, and how the critiques of the New Left and the Radical Right—strange bedfellows, indeed—combined to undermine the liberal consensus that emerged from the Great Depression and World War II.

Abrams begins with a brief, almost Spartan retrospective (five chapters in twenty-four pages) that looks back at America in the 1940s and 1950s beginning with Henry Luce’s declaration of the American Century. It contrasts ordinary life in the early 1940s with that in the final decade of the century and notes America’s new position of power in the world and its new affluence at home. From here, he moves into a discussion of eight “revolutions” in American life in the years after World War II, which constitutes the major but not the most rousing part of the book. These revolutions are: a new affluence; international hegemonic power; the rise of the military in American society; the reorganization of business; race relations; gender‑based roles; changes in sexual behavior; and the demise of privacy. These chapters are rich in detail, impressive in their reach, and beyond my poor talents to summarize in the space available. Suffice to note some of the interesting questions they pose.

Why did the new affluence of the late 1940s and 1950s beget a concern for poverty when the even greater affluence of the 1980s did not? Why did the richest, most powerful nation in the world lose its standing as a model of democracy at a time when liberal democracy was almost universally accepted as the only legitimate form of government? Why did a nation with a historic mistrust of military power accept the military so quickly as a central institution of governance? Why did a business community supportive of liberal reforms in many ways withdraw that support so abruptly? Why and how did race, gender, and sexual relations emerge as central components of liberalism and with what consequences? Why did a society that greatly expanded the rights of individuals become one with less privacy? Abrams’s answers to these questions, many of which come in the subsequent section, are not simple and will not be pleasing to everyone.

Part Three of America Transformed deals with the counterrevolution: the rise and fall of liberalism and the liberal Democratic coalition, the rise of the New Left and New Conservatism, and the Reagan revolution. It is rich in interpretation, at the heart of which is a lengthy chapter entitled “The Failure Syndrome.” Here the question is why did the great triumph of liberalism in the programs of the Great Society not extend its hegemony in American politics, but rather marked the beginning of its end? Abrams is careful to document that the antipoverty and other programs of Lyndon Johnson years worked. They reduced poverty by almost a half, though a booming economy and the prosperity that came with full employment account for about half of this gain. Medicare and Medicaid improved health; Food Stamps improved nutrition; Head Start improved the educational opportunities of poor children. Civil rights legislation had a profound and positive effect on the lives of African Americans. And eventually environmental and consumer legislation strengthened the regulatory hand of government for the better. So, what went wrong?

Part of the answer is that Great Society programs were too many, enacted too fast, with extravagant claims as to their effects, and with too few resources to implement them well. A larger part of the answer is Vietnam, which ate up resources that could have gone to support the many programs of the Great Society. But the truly fatal effect of Vietnam was that it raised doubts about both the wisdom of liberal internationalism and the trustworthiness of the national government. The optimism of the 1950s that buoyed liberalism was displaced by a cynicism that undermined it. Doubts that grew about Big Government were fed not merely by the rise of a New Conservatism but also by a New Left that blamed liberalism for not making good on its promises at home as well as for its failures abroad. Liberalism was faced not only with the rising tide of conservatism but also and “more lethally,” Abrams writes, “by a strident attack on the left flank by social forces that were actually inspired by its very successes.” Together the New Conservatism and the New Left, albeit for different reasons, embraced a view of liberalism as a failed philosophy of governance in which the programs of the Great Society were cast as either outright failures or as far too little far too late.

With the door of political opportunity open to them, the New Conservatives marched through decrying urban riots, welfare queens, free love, and the counterculture, charging that liberalism posed a threat to the American way of life. Meanwhile, the New Left faulted liberalism across the board—race, gender, the war, the environment—and took its stand behind a self‑congratulatory moralism that celebrated principle over the pragmatism of which the liberal coalition from the 1930s to the 1960s had been built. Academic scholars of no obvious political persuasion and reformers like Ralph Nader, unwittingly perhaps, contributed to the growing cynicism about government by embracing and advancing ideas like deregulation. The burden of criticism was too much for liberalism. Its philosophy was scorned by left and right, and its electoral coalition was in shambles with the defection of the South and the Old Left, the latter reborn in Republican ranks as “Neoconservatives.”

Ultimately what worries Abrams most about the revolutions in American politics since World War II is the growth in the war‑making powers of the presidency. This leads him beyond the sixty years he has set for his work and into the “new American century,” and in particular to what he sees as the irresponsibility of the Bush administration in its war in Iraq. It is here that Abrams’s passion and dispassion are in evidence as he critiques a war that is at once an extension of his argument but also an outrage to his sensibilities. It is, in its way, a fitting conclusion to the book, but also one that may let some dismiss the work as just another liberal attack on the Bush presidency.

Abrams’s book will find many admirers but most likely fewer friends. His clear liberal leanings will offend conservatives. While he finds faults in liberal programs, he never impugns the motives behind them or the importance and capacity of government to help ameliorate social ills—and he clearly believes its purposes are more noble than those of the new conservatives. Nor are those from the New Left likely to agree that they were complicit in the rise of conservatism to power. And the contemporary university left will almost certainly be offended by his view that, once the draft was eliminated, student radicalism “all but disappeared except on a single narrow and highly provocative issue: racial and lifestyle diversity [emphasis is his]. Nothing else excited the passion of student radicals—not cutbacks in social services, not a reduction in environmental protection, not campaign finance or government corruption, not the redistribution of wealth, not even cuts in funds for student scholarships.” If conservatives and reactionaries had written the script themselves, Abrams asserts, “these developments could hardly have suited them better.”