Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge
Historian of the twentieth- and twenty-first century United States speaking and writing on issues of American politics, political economy, and American peoplehood
CURRENT WORK
My recent book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era (Oxford, 2022), tracks the history of neoliberal ideology and policy from neoliberalism’s ascent under Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton through its fragmentation and decline in the tumultuous decade following the Great Recession, when Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders came to dominate American politics.
“After September 11, 2001, many reacquainted themselves with political discourses back to Rome that deployed but limited emergency authorities, while others reread twentieth-century German theorist Carl Schmitt, notorious for his claim that the power to rule in exceptional times shadows governance in ordinary ones. This rich and unprecedented collection recovers American traditions of engaging emergencies long before the last two decades dawned, Donald Trump came to power, and global pandemic struck. Assembling historical case studies and theoretical reflections, Gary Gerstle and Joel Isaac have achieved something intellectually superb and uncommonly cohesive. No one could deny its contemporary relevance; no one knows where new national emergencies are taking Americans next.”
Beyond the New Deal Order
In Beyond the New Deal Order, contributors bring fresh perspective to the historic meaning and significance of New Deal liberalism while identifying the elements of a distinctively “neoliberal” politics that emerged in its wake.
Liberty and Coercion
REVIEWS
American Crucible, Updated Edition
An Updated Edition of American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century, with a new chapter, “The Age of Obama, 2000-2016,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2017.
Copyright Gary Gerstle © 2016. All Rights Reserved.
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