Dan T. Carter is Education Foundation Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and former president of the Southern Historical Association. He is the author of Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South, winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History; From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963- 1994; and When the War Was Over: The Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South.
Carter builds a compelling, well-documented argument to the effect
that Wallace's presence catalyzed the emergence in the late 1960s
of a 'New American Majority on the foundation of the conservative
South.' . . . A stimulating political biography, solidly researched
and vividly presented.-- "New York Times"
Carter has captured the essence . . . in an easily readable,
remarkably insightful biography of both Wallace and 'Wallaceism, '
recreating how the man and his movement 'to stand up for America'
reshaped the language and limits of today's American political
system."-- "Philadelphia Inquirer"
Carter's life of Wallace is, by long odds, the finest of those
written about the Alabamian- who-would-be-president; indeed, it is
one of the finest political biographies of this or any other year.
. . . A superb social and political history of Alabama and the Deep
South in the 1950s and 1960s.-- "Los Angeles Times Book Review"
Carter builds a compelling, well-documented argument to the effect
that Wallace's presence catalyzed the emergence in the late 1960s
of a 'New American Majority on the foundation of the conservative
South.' . . . A stimulating political biography, solidly researched
and vividly presented.-- "New York Times"
Carter has captured the essence . . . in an easily readable,
remarkably insightful biography of both Wallace and 'Wallaceism, '
recreating how the man and his movement 'to stand up for America'
reshaped the language and limits of today's American political
system."-- "Philadelphia Inquirer"
Carter's life of Wallace is, by long odds, the finest of those
written about the Alabamian- who-would-be-president; indeed, it is
one of the finest political biographies of this or any other year.
. . . A superb social and political history of Alabama and the Deep
South in the 1950s and 1960s.-- "Los Angeles Times Book Review"
Despite the title, this book is mainly an interpretive biography of former Alabama governor Wallace, with few revelations but more of a skeptical edge than Stephan Lesher's recent authorized bio, George Wallace: American Populist. (This book argues, contra Lesher, that Wallace did in fact vow not to be ``out-niggered.'') A history professor at Emory University, Carter (Scottsboro) has produced a detailed and readable account of Wallace‘``the most influential loser in twentieth-century American politics''‘as political animal, driven by ambition far more than by ideology, with a disarmingly folksy personal style. On the wrong side in so many civil rights-era clashes, from Bull Connor's brutality in Birmingham to the admitting of black students to the state university, Wallace nonetheless tapped the ``Southernization'' of suburban and ethnic white America, thereby fueling his two presidential bids. Though his crippling in a 1972 assassination attempt ended his political career, Wallace, as the author states in a coda, anticipated ``the conservative groundswell that transformed American politics in the 1980s.'' (Oct.)
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