Resilient America: Electing Nixon in 1968, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government

Monday, October 6, 2014 at 12:00 p.m. (Sturgis Hall) *Book signing to follow - Michael Nelson is the Fulmer Professor of Political Science at Rhodes College, a Fellow of Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History, and a Senior Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. He is the author of numerous books, including “How the South Joined the Gambling Nation: The Politics of State Policy Innovation,” with John L. Mason, winner of the 2009 V. O. Key Award for Outstanding Book on Southern Politics from the Southern Political Science Association. His new book, “Resilient America,” explores how urban riots and the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the politics of outrage and race—all pointed to a reordering of party coalitions, of groups and regions, a hardening and widening of an ideological divide—and to the historical importance of the 1968 election as a watershed event.