Introduction
PART I. DESERT
Chapter 1. Colonial Prologue
Chapter 2. Contested Recovery
Chapter 3. The Business of War
PART II. RECLAMATION
Chapter 4. The Right to Rule
Chapter 5. Grasstops Democracy
Chapter 6. Forecasting the Business Climate
Chapter 7. "Second War Between the States"
PART III. SPRAWL
Chapter 8. Industrial Phoenix
Chapter 9. The Conspicuous Grasstops
Chapter 10. "A Frankenstein's Monster"
Epilogue. Whither Phoenix?
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer teaches history at Loyola University Chicago. She is coeditor (with Nelson Lichtenstein) of The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination, which is also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
"Elizabeth Tandy Shermer's brilliant study of Phoenix shows how a
group of young businessmen closed the liberal window of opportunity
and then engineered dynamic growth free of the restraints of the
New Deal state. Shermer traces the modern conservative revival in
America back to the economic conservatism of Barry Goldwater and
his fellow businessmen, not just to the racial and anticommunist
groups that coalesced around his 1964 campaign or to the social and
cultural tensions of the 1970s. This is the best study of the
creation of the Sunbelt that we have."—Anthony J. Badger, author of
FDR: The First Hundred Days
"The history of Phoenix allows Shermer to explore, with real
nuance, the relationship of business interests with the liberal
state, the shifting politics of urban boosterism, and the synergies
between antistatist businessmen and the military-industrial complex
that made their fortunes. Shermer researches deeply like a hedgehog
but ranges widely like a fox, and her arguments are strengthened by
comparisons with places as diverse as Southern California, Nevada,
Tennessee, and Georgia. Even Rustbelt historians have much to learn
in these pages."—Thomas J. Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania
"This richly documented and subtly argued book [is a] fresh
perspective on modern U.S. politics."—William Link, Journal of
American History
"With meticulous research, interregional comparisons, and stand-out
prose, Shermer makes a convincing case for the centrality of the
booster class to the conservative counterrevolution."—Bethany
Moreton, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the
Americas
"Sunbelt Capitalism, a local study of conservatism with sweeping
ambitions, . . . has done the historiography a great service. In
her telling, much of the Goldwater mythology is shed."—Robert Self,
Reviews in American History
"Shermer's masterful guide to the political evolution of Phoenix is
a classic work of urban and regional history. It is also guaranteed
to generate a debate over her persuasive claim that the Arizona
city, under the sway of Barry Goldwater's circle, gave birth to the
economic formula we have come to know as neoliberalism. A
remarkable achievement!"—Andrew Ross, author of Bird on Fire:
Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City
"A remarkably wide-ranging and masterful analysis of the political
economy of the mid-twentieth-century United States."—Shane
Hamilton, American Historical Review
"With its focus on local business elites, this study helps us
understand postwar conservatism in a new way. Through Shermer's
eyes, we see that the conservative political project is not simply
'antistatist,' and that the real struggle is over what government
will do, not whether or not there will be government. Sunbelt
Capitalism is a fascinating and compelling new book."—Kimberly
Phillips-Fein, author of Invisible Hands: The Making of the
Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan
Ask a Question About this Product More... |