Excerpt from Fortress America by Elaine Tyler May, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Like World War II, when the nation came together to face its enemies, the Cold War called for national unity. Many scholars have argued that the "Cold War consensus" that prevailed in the postwar era—in which the two mainline parties, Democrats and Republicans, opposed communism, supported a nuclear arms race, and maintained remnants of New Deal liberalism—disintegrated in the 1960s. According to this view, American politics became increasingly polarized over the final decades of the twentieth century and continued along this path well into the twenty-first, leading to a situation in which the two parties are in agreement on practically nothing today. I argue in this book that in fact a new consensus developed over the last half of the twentieth century, rooted in a new definition of "security" that was grounded in fear and that both major parties adopted and most Americans across the political spectrum accepted. While the two major political parties became locked in fierce battles in the twenty-first century, large numbers of citizens retreated from the political process altogether and into their own private lives. As a result, active citizenship declined and the common good withered. The path to our current situation began more than half a century ago.

THE COLD WAR defined the framework of security through the 1950s. The sources of danger began to pivot in the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of rising crime, urban unrest, protests against the war in Vietnam, and the civil rights and feminist movements. Public opinion polls and survey data demonstrate that Cold War anxieties morphed into fears of crime and social disruption. Those fears far exceeded actual threats. Even as the Cold War waned and crime rates fell, fear continued to rise. The fear that developed was neither neutral nor abstract.

Then as now, African Americans were more likely than whites to be victims of crime and violence. They had good reason to fear for their safety and well-being. But many whites in the 1960s watched inner-city black neighborhoods being consumed by flames and worried that the violence would spread to white neighborhoods. Domestic disruption and a growing sense of personal vulnerability led to a new definition of security that was grounded in fear of violence and physical assault. According to this notion, nobody was really safe, regardless of their wealth, race, or gender.

At the same time, the postwar economic boom that had lifted many Americans into the middle class began to falter. The nuclear family, with a father whose income could support a wife and children, and a mother who would provide daily care of the home and family, had been the bulwark of security in the early postwar years. With so much turmoil in the world, many believed that a home in which parents conformed to clearly defined roles and responsibilities would provide stability and a solid safeguard against the dangers emanating from outside. That ideal became increasingly difficult to achieve, both because of changing economic realities and because of the discontent among women and men who felt trapped by their assigned roles. Men found it difficult to support a family on a single income, and women joined the paid labor force to help pay the bills. The nuclear family began to unravel, with declining rates of marriage, soaring rates of divorce, and a declining birthrate. Social, cultural, and political upheavals disrupted the sense of security that the nuclear family had offered, and Americans of all backgrounds and classes felt the ground shifting beneath their feet.

As the family faced new challenges, the home itself became a site of vulnerability. Houses that once provided protection became places that needed protection. Homeowners transformed their houses into barricaded fortresses, with alarm systems, metal grates, fences, and locks. City planners designed streets that reflected "bunker architecture."

Excerpted from Fortress America by Elaine Tyler May. Copyright © 2017 by Elaine Tyler May. Excerpted by permission of Basic Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.