The essay also aroused the attention of a literary agent and soon after earned him a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It was Perlstein's 1996 Lingua Franca essay 'Who Owns the Sixties?' that won him public notice, by exposing the emerging chasm between older and younger historians. Perlstein also began writing book reviews, for publications like The Nation and Slate. While in New York, Perlstein interned at Lingua Franca, a magazine about academic and intellectual life, where he would become an associate editor.

Career Īfter graduate study in American studies at the University of Michigan, Perlstein moved to New York in 1994, settling in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. While at the University of Chicago – years Perlstein described as 'delightfully noisy and dissident', and a stark contrast to the suburbia of his youth, which 'felt like a jail' – he was able to engage with and catch neighborhood jam sessions. to stay one step ahead of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's building inspectors.' Following graduation from Nicolet High School, Perlstein attended the University of Chicago, earning a B.A. That's where it started.' He also wrote in Rolling Stone: 'A sixties obsessive since childhood, I misspent my teenage years prowling a ramshackle five-story used-book warehouse that somehow managed. He later recounted in an interview: 'I ended up getting my own archive on the 1960s culture wars. In high school, upon earning his driver's license, Perlstein would head to Renaissance Books in downtown Milwaukee, and spend hours in its basement among stacks of old magazines from the 1960s. Perlstein grew up in the Bayside and Fox Point neighborhoods of suburban Milwaukee, taking cross country trips with his parents and siblings to national landmarks like Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park. His father ran Bonded Messenger Service, a delivery company founded by his grandfather in 1955. Perlstein was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a Reform Jewish family, the third child of Jerold and Sandra (née Friedman) Perlstein. Politico has dubbed him 'a chronicler extraordinaire of modern conservatism.' Early life and education The author of five bestselling books, Perlstein received the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his first book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. Perlstein (born September 3, 1969) is an American historian and journalist who has garnered recognition for his chronicles of the post-1960s American conservative movement.

Nixonland book review