Rick Perlstein – “The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan”

The bestselling author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008), Perlstein paints “a dazzling portrait” of America on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the tumultuous political and economic times of the 1970s in his new book. Against a backdrop of melodramas from the Arab oil embargo to Patty Hearst to the near-bankruptcy of America’s greatest city, Perlstein asks the question, “What does it mean to believe in America? To wave a flag – or to reject the glibness of the flag wavers?” The event will take place in the Miller Lecture Hall at Sarah Lawrence College.