Philip Jenkins asserts that the period from 1976 to 1986 marks a distinct era in America's political and social development. Popular fears, aroused by perceptions of threats to the most basic realities of life, family structures and gender roles, and neighbourhood and community, were exacerbated by US military weakness and international decline. The result was a nation under siege, consumed by fears of child abusers and kidnappers, drugs, terrorism, rising oil prices and serial killers. While such fears were utilized by politicians and aggravated by the sensationalist reporting styles of television news, Jenkins contends that they stemmed from a rejection of the values of the 1960s, based on optimism, tolerance and national strength. Conservative political victories during this era were most marked when they built upon existing public concern and discontent, for example in relation to crime and justice. Reagan's war on drugs was, therefore, an outgrowth of a national attack on 1960s liberalism.

Jenkins seeks to move beyond what he describes as the common historiographical distinction between political and social or cultural history. Political accounts of this era, he contends, ignore issues such as crime and justice and thereby miss or misinterpret the significance of popular fascination with serial murderers and the social implications of a move from rehabilitative to retributive justice. Such an effort to incorporate the study of social issues, rather than social movements, into the political history of the 1970s is useful and indeed necessary. Jenkins persuasively denies the centrality of race and class as categories of social and cultural division, although his emphasis on the pervasive nature of fear suggests a nationalizing affect that disregards social or economic cleavages. He intends, moreover, to challenge the prevailing historiographical emphasis on the role of conservative activists in bringing about political change. Conservative political victories depended, rather, on the Republican Party's ability to relate their messages to existing social anxieties. “Conservatives were not so much peddling fear as taking seriously the fears that were already widespread, and doing so in a way that encouraged acceptance of other parts of their agenda” (76). Jenkins does not entirely disregard the significance of conservatives' organizational strengths and voter mobilization efforts, but neither does he fully account for individual, movement or party agency in determining political change.

Given the author's research on American religion it is unsurprising that he discusses the function of conservative religious denominations as catalysts for political change. Focussing not on the organizing endeavours of such groups, Jenkins relates the growth of conservative religious denominations to the national appeal of Christian apocalyptic rhetoric and the revival of Cold War tensions. In line with the new focus on crime as a moral choice, Reagan's political success was thus related to his ability to place both domestic and foreign policy issues in a framework of good versus evil. As such, Reagan benefited from a revolution already in progress by 1980. Jenkins, perhaps, exaggerates the threat-perception levels: “Anyone who believed the United States might actually reach the year 1984 sounded like Pollyanna” (166). He illustrates, however, that over the course of the 1970s utopianism and libertarianism became threatening social visions, which fostered the widespread social anxieties of the 1980s.