The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn
The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn
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The Hardhat Riot
Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution

Author: David Paul Kuhn

Narrator: Bob Souer

Unabridged: 12 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/22/2020

Synopsis

In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story of when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed. It was unthinkable one generation before: FDR's "forgotten man" siding with the party of Big Business and, ultimately, paving the way for presidencies from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.

This is the story of the schism that tore liberalism apart. In the shadow of the half-built Twin Towers, on the same day the Knicks rallied against the odds and won their first championship, we experience the tumult of Nixon's America and John Lindsay's New York City, as festering division explodes into violence and Nixon's advisors realize that the Democratic coalition has collapsed, that this is their chance, because "these, quite candidly, are our people now."

In this riveting story—rooted in meticulous research, including thousands of pages of never-before-seen records—we go back to a harrowing day that explains the politics of today. We experience an emerging class conflict between two newly polarized Americas, and how it all boiled over on one brutal day, when the Democratic Party's future was bludgeoned by its past.

About David Paul Kuhn

David Paul Kuhn is an author, reporter, and political analyst. He has served as a senior and chief political writer across the political-media landscape, from Politico to RealClearPolitics to CBS News, as well as written for the Atlantic, Washington Post Magazine, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, National Review, New Republic, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications, and regularly appears on networks ranging from BBC to Fox News. He has covered four presidential campaigns and reported on events from the epicenter of the collapse of the World Trade Center to North Korean backroom nuclear negotiations. Earlier in his career, he covered the eastern United States for the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Shimbun, the world's most widely circulated newspaper. Kuhn is the author of, most recently, The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution-a "riveting book" (Jill Lepore, The New Yorker), "perhaps the best book ever on how Democrats lost the white working class" (political strategist James Carville), a "truly captivating read" (Robert Guest, The Economist), that is "crucial for anyone seeking to understand the politics of 2020" (Tom Edsall, the New York Times).

Reviews

Goodreads review by Steven on July 30, 2020

For me, the first week of May 1970 was one of extreme personal conflict. On May 4th, the nation witnessed the death of four Kent State student at the hands of the Ohio National Guard. On May 8th New York City Mayor, John V. Lindsay ordered the lowering of the American flag to half staff at City Hall......more

Goodreads review by Umar on January 26, 2021

This is an important read for serious students of American politics and helps explain how the white working-class drifted from a Democratic Party increasingly ran by wealthy white elites no longer advocating for labor issues and the like in favor of cultural and economic liberalism. David Paul Kuhn......more

Goodreads review by Laura on July 16, 2020

So, if you want to try to understand how Donald Trump was able to get elected in 2016, you have to go back to 1970s. 1970 was the beginning of the nadir for the blue collar worker. Or truly, the nadir would probably been serfdom, but the blue collar had risen to the middle class after literally cent......more

Goodreads review by Shrike58 on July 12, 2024

The events covered in this book fall under the category of events I THINK I should remember, as I was eleven and a half at the time and I certainly remember media coverage of the "incursion" into Cambodia (I was a precocious military history buff), and the shootings at Kent State University (I grew......more

Goodreads review by Craig on October 14, 2020

There are some valuable elements to The Hardhat Riot: a sometimes gruesomely detailed play by play of the May 7, 1970 riot in lower Manhattan, a cogent take on the long-term erosion of Democratic support among blue collar workers. But Kuhn does a bad job with an absolutely central part of the story:......more

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