When George McGovern lost the 1972 presidential election, Richard Nixon's landslide victory buried more than an insurgent campaign. By tracing the transformation of American liberalism and sixties idealism from their political crash in 1972 to muddled centrism of twenty-first century, this book shows what the McGovern insurgency has to teach us.
Bruce Miroff is professor of political science and Collins Fellow at the State University of New York at Albany. He is the author of Icons of Democracy: American Leaders as Heroes, Aristocrats, Dissenters, and Democrats (also from Kansas) and the coauthor of The Democratic Debate: An Introduction to American Politics, now in its fourth edition.