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Book Summary and Reviews of Against the Wind by Neal Gabler

Against the Wind by Neal Gabler

Against the Wind

Edward Kennedy and the Rise of Conservatism, 1976-2009

by Neal Gabler

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  • Published:
  • Nov 2022, 1264 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From the author of Catching the Wind comes the second volume of the definitive biography of Ted Kennedy and a history of modern American liberalism.

Against the Wind completes Neal Gabler's magisterial biography of Ted Kennedy, but it also unfolds the epic, tragic story of the fall of liberalism and the destruction of political morality in America. With Richard Nixon having stilled the liberal wind that once propelled Kennedy's—and his fallen brothers'—political crusades, Ted Kennedy faced a lonely battle. As Republicans pressed Reaganite dogmas of individual freedom and responsibility and Democratic centrists fell into line, Kennedy was left as the most powerful voice legislating on behalf of those society would neglect or punish: the poor, the working class, and African Americans.

Gabler shows how the fault lines that cracked open in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam were intentionally widened by Kennedy's Republican rivals to create a moral vision of America that stood in direct opposition to once broadly shared commitments to racial justice and economic equality. Yet even as he fought this shift, Ted Kennedy's personal moral failures in this era—the endless rumors of his womanizing and public drunkenness and his bizarre behavior during the events that led to rape accusations against his nephew William Kennedy Smith—would be used again and again to weaken his voice and undercut his claims to political morality.

Tracing Kennedy's life from the wilderness of the Reagan years through the compromises of the Clinton era, from his rage against the craven cruelty of George W. Bush to his hope that Obama would deliver on a lifetime of effort on behalf of universal health care, Gabler unfolds Kennedy's heroic legislative work against the backdrop of a nation grown lost and fractured. In this outstanding conclusion to the saga that began with Catching the Wind, Neal Gabler offers his inimitable insight into a man who fought to keep liberalism alive when so many were determined to extinguish it. Against the Wind sheds new light both on a revered figure in the American Century and on America's current existential crisis.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"[T]he magisterial conclusion to Gabler's two-volume biography of the Massachusetts senator...Though massive, it's engrossing thanks to Gabler's elegant, evocative prose...This smart, illuminating, and stirring portrait of a liberal champion fascinates." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A thorough, admiring, and not uncritical study of a political lion whose roar is much needed these days." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

This information about Against the Wind was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Neal Gabler

Neal Gabler is the author of six books, including four biographies: Catching the Wind, An Empire of Their Own, Winchell, and Walt Disney. He has been the recipient of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Shorenstein Fellowship, and a Woodrow Wilson Public Policy scholarship, and was the chief nonfiction judge of the National Book Awards.

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