The INHERITANCE: HOW THREE FAMILIES AND THE AMERICAN POLITICAL MAJORITY MOVED FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

by Samuel G. Freedman

From Simon & Schuster, The Inheritance is Samuel G. Freedman's exploration of how three families and America moved from Roosevelt to Reagan and beyond.

A saga covering more than eighty years of American history investigates how three obscure immigrant families made and unmade the Democratic majority and how their grandchildren eventually ended up as ardent Republicans.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History

464 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1996

About the author

Samuel G. Freedman is a columnist for The New York Times and a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of seven acclaimed books, most recently "Breaking The Line," and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Reviews

[Swetha Kallaganad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good one

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn’t give it a rating of more than 3 stars. Lengthy writing and descriptive into every piece of details can easily get the reader lost.

It requires a lot of patience to finish reading it

[Suzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book follows three immigrant families through 4 generations into the mid-nineties and purports to show how and why these families went from Democrats in the beginning to activist Republicans by the end. Not only that, Freedman aims to show that these families illustrate a national trend. I enjoyed reading the book in the beginning, but not so much by the time we got to the fourth generation as adults. Not that I didn't like them as people (big of me, as they were activist Republicans) but that the book became very detailed in its description of how the politics they were involved in worked. I think it was all the more draggy because that era was not so long ago as to be a curiosity, but not current enough to be interesting, to me anyway.
There was a lot that was thought provoking in the book. I think most provoking was just seeing how both parties work as machines, keeping the Ins in and the Outs out. One memorable quotation (paraphrased) said politics isn't so much a contest between parties as a contest between incumbents and non-incumbents. Politics turns out to be essentially less we the people voting than we the people getting manipulated. Yucckk.
Back to the premise of the book, what occurred to me is that this trend that Freedman discovered and documented--if truly a trend--wasn't so much about Democrats becoming disillusioned with their party over the generations, but about working class immigrant families who were Democrats becoming disillusioned over the generations. As soon as they became more educated and more middle class, they tilted right. But what about other constituencies of Democrats, like Jews, Ivy League Grads/Intellectuals, Artists/Entertainers and Blacks? None of these groups followed the same economic trends, except maybe Blacks, and none of these groups tilted right. So, it seems that really, it is the move from have nots to haves, as a group, that accounts for the change. Maybe that's all Freedman is saying, after all. The book raises a lot of questions.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book fascinating. The story of 20th century American politics told through three families was riveting. I also found the intricacies of NY state politics appalling--maybe I was naive, but I didn't expect so much corruption.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

(no. 40 of 2016)