| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore. By James T. Patterson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xvi, 448 pp. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 978-0-19-512216-9.)

James T. Patterson, the author of the latest volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, won the Bancroft Prize for his volume (Grand Expectations, 1996) in that series on the years immediately preceding the ones covered in Restless Giant. In this sequel, Patterson dutifully points out the social and economic problems Americans faced during the years in question—when liberals, he writes, "continued to bewail the sorrier sides of life in the United States" (p. 183). But his story is basically positive and optimistic, almost cheerful. "This is not primarily a tale of Limits, Decline, or Conflict," he declares at the outset, because, compared to 1974, "most" Americans in 2001 had lives of "greater affluence, convenience, and comfort" (p. 11). Where others have written about deindustrialization, Patterson sees a shift to a service economy; where others have described twenty years of stagnant wages and growing economic inequality in the seventies and eighties, Patterson sees an improvement in the "quality of life," especially a growth in personal autonomy (p. 12).

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