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Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore. By James T. Patterson. The Oxford History of the United States. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xvi, 448. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 978-0-19-530522-7; cloth, $35.00, ISBN 978-0-19-512216-9.)
This is James T. Patterson's second contribution to-and the eleventh entry in-the prestigious Oxford History of the United States. Patterson also wrote the previous volume, the Bancroft Prize-winning Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York, 1996). This volume picks up where that one left off and delivers an impressive narrative of events of the two and a half decades after Richard Nixon's resignation. A distinguished scholar of modern America, Patterson has an impressive command of the relevant secondary literature, his prose is smart and highly readable, and his observations and conclusions are fair-minded and balanced. Although this volume suffers in comparison to his previous one, Patterson works admirably within the book's inherent limitations and delivers a narrative that holds its own against others in this series.
The title Grand Expectations provided the previous book's driving thesis. It captured the optimism of the post-World War II years, when...