American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now

by Paul Starr

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

How the country that came to elect Obama could also elect Trump

How did Americans come to elect Barack Obama twice—and then elect Donald Trump twice? Those choices capture what Paul Starr calls the American contradiction.

The whole truth about America, Starr argues in this new history of the United States since the 1950s, has never been contained in one consistent set of values. Our nation was born in the contradiction between freedom and slavery. Today it is beset by a contradiction between a changing people and an old nation, a nation with entrenched institutions that have empowered those who fear the changes and look to restore an old America of their imagining.

Starr tells this history from the dual standpoints of the progressive movements that changed the American people and of the movements reacting to them.

Black Americans, he argues, served as a model minority, setting in motion America’s twentieth-century revolutions in gender as well as race and rights. With industry’s decline and the rise of economic inequality, millions of Americans have felt dispossessed and seek to bring the old America back. Trump is their revenge. American Contradiction explains how 1950s America became the almost unrecognizable America of the 2020s.

About the Author

Paul Starr holds a joint appointment as Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he also serves as the Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs at the School of Public and International Affairs. He is the founding co-editor of The American Prospect, a publication he established in 1990 to explore politics, policy, and ideas. His academic contributions are most notably distinguished by his 1982 book, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, for which he was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Bancroft Prize in American History.
Over a distinguished career spanning more than five decades, Starr has contributed extensively to academic and public discourse. His scholarship encompasses institutional analysis, political sociology, and the sociology of knowledge, with a particular focus on how information and technology shape democracy.

Beyond his book-length works, his prolific writing includes essays and op-eds for prominent newspapers and magazines. Earlier in his career, he served as a senior health policy advisor at the White House in 1993, leveraging his expertise to influence public policy.

High Praise & Acclaim 

“[A] thoughtful study of the push and pull from right to left and back again in the past 75 years. . . . A useful key to understanding how American politics and the American polity have become so intractably polarized.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Paul Starr, one of the great chroniclers of American institutions, provides a brilliant reinterpretation of the modern political era. His book unpacks the fundamental contradictions that have haunted the body politic since the 1960s. A country born in contraction between slavery and freedom has remained at odds with itself even as the issues changed. The bold attack by the progressive project on hierarchical institutions produced an equally fierce counterattack by those who wanted to restore an imagined earlier era. American Contradiction teaches us how, far from being an anomaly, the election of Donald Trump twice to the presidency was a result of deeply-rooted political forces that had been steadily gaining strength within the Republican Party for decades. This is a must-read book for sociologists, historians, political scientists, and any reader interested in our nation’s political history.”
—Julian E. Zelizer, Princeton University, and author of In Defense of Partisanship

“American Contradiction is an extraordinarily instructive analysis of the perplexing character of the United States. Starr’s commentary on the journey from Eisenhower to Trump bristles with insight. As I read, I found myself constantly underlining his informative and accessible text.”
—Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and author of Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture

“A fascinating examination of the clash between changing family, gender, and sexual norms, racial justice struggles, rightwing political campaigns, and accelerating economic inequality that underlies our current political crises. Eye-opening.”
—Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap

“Anything Paul Starr writes is important to read, and this book is no exception. American Contradiction is a highly sophisticated history of the United States since the 1950s emphasizing the interplay between social movements, politics, culture, law, and social policy.”
—Nelson Lichtenstein, coauthor of A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism