No Right Turn

“There is much to admire here… No Right Turn is a wonderful read. Courtwright engagingly profiles figures from Clare Boothe Luce to Johnny Carson. He has gone to all the archives, interviewed all the right people, and thought deeply about his findings… He tells his story with plenty of fresh twists and turns.”—Laura Kalman, American Prospect

“Marvelously idiosyncratic.”—Alan Wolfe, New Republic online

“Unlike many historians of conservatism, who stop with the election of Ronald Reagan as if it were the end of the story, Courtwright takes us up to today. His book makes the case that there has been no real conservative revolution in American politics.”—Kim Phillips-Fein, Bookforum

“As a critique of U.S. politics and culture since the 1960s, No Right Turn is both thorough and a lively read.”—M. N. Green, Choice

“Professor Courtwright’s book is quite simply the best political history of the era from Nixon to the present. In lively prose, armed with a mountain of fresh research, including several interviews with key players, Courtwright convincingly argues that American political culture since the ‘sixties’ is nothing if not perplexing. He demonstrates that, although the ‘moral right’ entered the political arena with a vengeance, it failed to reshape the national culture due to the pervasiveness of countercultural values, which had been sopped up by the unstoppable forces of consumer capitalism. Yet, Courtwright also shows that where the moral right failed, the economic right succeeded—that contemporary American life is dominated by both cultural and economic libertarianism, the twin legacies of the boomer generation.”—Andrew Hartman, author of Education and the Cold War

“A first-rate book—energetic, insightful, and a treat to read. Courtwright describes how moral conservatives joined with economic conservatives to form a powerful Republican coalition, only to discover a fundamental illusion: the Republican bus headed to market square with only an occasional detour (drugs, crime, welfare) to church street. This well-told story does the fantastic subject full justice.”—James Morone, author of Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History

“Crisply written, colorful, and often out-of-the-box original, this is a bold, sweeping look at the last four decades of American history.”—Gil Troy, author of Leading from the Center