C/D: Rick Perlstein

The malaise ("Crisis of Confidence") speech actually gave Carter a huge polling bump right away--17 and 11 points in a couple of polls Perlstein cites. But then he upended his cabinet (not expecting the speech to be so successful, that had already been planned), and Hamilton Jordan's Studio 54 coke scandal broke. Which turned out to be concocted by Steve Rubell as leverage against an impending tax audit.

I'm trying to remember if that was the last front-page celebrity scandal that turned out to be entirely false. Can't be--that's 40 years ago--but I'm drawing a blank. They all turn out to be true (or at least are denied but never disproven).

Perlstein says the paperback edition is ready and it will be free of the shocking number of typos and errors that are in the hardcover. That is something I found very distracting and mean to complain about here.

*meant to

I've noticed a few. I wouldn't say shocking--six or seven (in 600 pages)?--but maybe I've missed some. Having self-published and let mistakes creep in (favourite ever: mixing up Jack Black/White three or four times), it actually gives me some comfort that a big publisher would do the same.

I dunno, I started counting them and the number got really high. I would have gladly proofread the book for him for some modest fee, say $300.

That's the surprising thing, that there's even one or two. It's Simon & Schuster--you'd think they'd have a small team on such a lengthy book.

the paperback edition is ready

Kinda hoping the publisher will box all four up into a set. I've read Nixonland, but none of the others, and I'd absolutely buy that.

in my very very very short resume as a published historian, i have already had a couple moments of getting copy-edited pre-final proofs sent to me and only at that phase, me noticing crazy errors like "the the." this is not because the editors were bad, just a matter of them being human imho. i'm the one that sent them the crummy text in the first place and probably they burned out fixing 99 other mistakes and missed the 1.

i also have to assume (I have no real idea) that in this day and age of print media, budgets for things like this have probably been pared back - would not surprise me if one editor is now doing the work that formerly would have been three people's. i'm just grateful they caught the other 99 mistakes and gave me the chance to catch the 1! but if i ever have anything out there as long as perlstein's books, i'd be shocked NOT to find some typos!

One that made me laugh (not a typo): a reference to "the forty-year-old president of Canada" on page 668.

Pg. 756; the darkness at the end of the tunnel is visible...In view of what Obama and Biden inherited, this Irving Kristol quote from 1980 that Perlstein digs up resonates: "The neo-conservative is willing to leave those problems* to be coped with by liberal interregnums. He wants to shape the future and will leave it to his opponents to tidy up afterwards."

*created by forcing through tax cuts

i haven't read this yet but he has a new piece in TNR https://newrepublic.com/article/161603/john-birch-society-qanon-trump

"john-birch-society-qanon-trump"

Weird endorsement for Kennedy in 1980: the parents of Mary Jo Kopechne. (Would you want the reminder?) Senator Biden endorsed Carter with, Perlstein notes, "practically an apology":

"Jimmy Carter is not the finest thing since wheat cakes; he's not the second coming...He's not going to go down in the history books...but he is doing a good job."

Today in REAGANLAND, an ambitious difference-splitter "endorses" Jimmy Carter, " not the finest thing since wheat cakes...not the 2nd coming...but...doing a good job." Tho, "If you're looking for an Irish Catholic Democrat to support, wait until 1984 and one of us will be back." pic.twitter.com/8E2vYNRgRA

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) April 22, 2020

Biden, on the other hand, is definitely the finest thing since wheat cakes

The Kopechne endorsement almost struck me like Hillary getting Monica Lewinsky's endorsement in 2016.

Eh, by that point, it was probably just water under the bridge.

I checked with Alan Alda, and he said it's okay if I laugh.

Finished Nixonland.

Boy, does that book go up a notch once Nixon begins recording his conversations.

Finished. (Reaganland). Exhausted. Possibly the longest book I've ever read.

I thought it a breeze -- I gobbled it. Did it bore you?

At times, yes--when he waded into stuff like Moral Majority meetings, or anti-tax amendments and such. I found there was much more of that than in the previous three books. I like it best when he steps back and connects what's going on politically to the culture out there. And there was some of that--like how Reagan's defense of the Vietnam War was initially assumed to be catastrophic by the press, but that meanwhile they completely missed that The Deer Hunter was indicating something else was plainly underfoot.

Yeah. I loved those bits.

Good podcast with the LGM folk: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/10/lgm-podcast-reaganland

My next book, with @littlebrown + editor @pronoydsarkar—on what has happened to America since 2000, and how it can unhappen. Short, sharp, and out in time for the 2024 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. And it will take no prisoners. Now leave me alone for 18 months! pic.twitter.com/OHbpk4dNK2

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) May 17, 2022

I've read a couple of those here's-how-to-fix-things books (which this sounds like), and can think of many I haven't; wish he'd continued on with what he was doing.

The "short, sharp" thing makes me wonder if he needed to give himself a "little" project break between what he was doing and the "leave me alone" bit makes me hopeful he's getting back to it. Dunno.

I thought so too. Also: cash flow.

He's already answered the question the next book would need to answer--"How did Trump happen?"--but I still want him to write it.

I remembered a book called "After Strage Texts" after reading about TS Eliott's "After Strange Gods" and discovered it literally un-google-able": only TS and stuff about texting. It can't even come up (without subtitle) in an Amazon search! https://t.co/XFrDEooZZx

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) February 10, 2023

True, I also get no results for "After Strage Texts"

"After Strange Texts" otoh...

I've looked for ASG for a couple years. Not even my uni library has a copy.