The Path to Paralysis

Reviews / Votes

U.S.News The Conversation BingUNews Midwest New Books Network "Writing the history of the present is a difficult challenge but in The Path to Paralysis, Donald Nieman gives us a lucid, well-informed, and persuasive narrative of the last half century of American political and social life. Anyone who wonders how the United States got from the Great Society to the 2021 Capitol insurrection will find compelling answers in this book." - Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University, USA. Don Nieman has produced a compelling account of the dead-end American politics has now reached. How could a political system that produced John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, who went to the moon and strove for a Great Society, have been the same system that also produced Newt Gingrich and Donald J. Trump? How could a vibrant, if often contentious system of democratic politics 60 years ago have given way to the gridlock and stasis that confront the United States at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century? Nieman guides his readers, in this graceful text, from the Democratic triumph of 1964 to the dilemmas of our body politic in 2024. If you want to experience how a first-rate historical analysis can give meaning to the near collapse of democratic politics in 2024, this book is a must-read for you." -Stan Katz, Lecturer w/rank Professor, School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, USA. "The most urgent and frightening threat to this nation's democracy-and indeed its future-is our deep, intractable political divide. Prof. Nieman's, The Path to Paralysis, recounts the nation's journey to political dysfunction with sobering accuracy. Will the Republic hold? Wisely answered, '[...]we can't be sure.' " -Robert S. Smith, Harry G. John Professor of History, Marquette University, USA. A timely, articulate, and informative contribution toward understanding how the American body politic became so polarized that there is now a real threat to our American style democracy collapsing into an authoritarian state and/or a second civil war, "The Path to Paralysis: How American Politics Became Nasty, Dysfunctional, and a Threat to the Republic" is a significant, critically important, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, governmental, and college/university library Contemporary Political Science collections and supplemental Civics/Citizenship curriculum studies lists. - Midwest In his latest book, The Path to Paralysis: How American Politics Became Nasty, Dysfunctional, and a Threat to the Republic, historian Donald G. Nieman provides a magisterial account of the past half century of American political history. He has crafted a remarkably well written and deeply comprehensive history of American politics since the mid-twentieth century. Even those familiar with the subject will greatly enjoy Nieman's ambitious telling of this critical period of U.S. history. -Journal of Southern History