The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics

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Summary: Fine biography of Wallace and the times
Review: After reading this book, you truly will see the impact Wallace has had on politics and the right. Goldwater and Nixon obviously took their cues from this man. Carter has presented an excellent portrait of Wallace and the lengths he went to in order to be elected. My only regret in this book is a very small portrait of his terms as the chief executive of Alabama, but this is a minor quibble. A very enjoyable read.

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Summary: first rate scholarship BEAUTIFULLY written
Review: Every year I teach this book for about 125 undergraduates in a course called "Race and American Politics from the New Deal to the New Right." Though it is a course that welcomes controversy, one thing that virtually all of my students agree upon is that this is a GREAT book. Carter, the dean of Southern historians, is a masterful storyteller with a matchless eye for detail and a balanced political judgment. He shows how Wallace, far from being just another Southern demogogue, opens the way to the transformation of American politics and the rise of a new conservatism whose wellsprings are the rage and fear of white Americans in the face of the civil rights revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s. It's a brilliant, absorbing book and every year when I read it again I am struck by the rich craft of Carter's prose and the deep thoughtfulness of his assessments.

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Summary: Well-researched and well-written
Review: Since I read, on 7 Dec 1969, Professor Carter's masterful Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South I have since this book was published in 1995 wanted to read it. It tells well the story of George Wallace, four-times governor of Alabama, and his time, and is well footnoted with a good bibliography. It is disturbing that as recently as 1972 a blatantly racist message could resonate so powerfully not only in Alabama but in other states as well. A few years ago the ban on miscegenation which was in the Alabama Constitution was repealed by the people of Alabama (tho it had been inoperative by reason of a US Supreme Court ruling long before)and I found that encouraging, but one has to fear that many of the people who so raucously supported the bigoted and corrupt regime of Wallace as recently as 1972 may not have repented. Reading this book is as sobering as thinking about the fact that millions in Germany as recently as 1939 supported Nazidom.