<i>A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars</i> by Andrew Hartman

A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, by Andrew Hartman. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2015. 342 pp. $30.00 US (cloth), $19.00 US (paper). What were the culture wars? Andrew Hartman provides a fairly bounded definition of this amorphous phenomenon, which is not the least accomplishment of this thorough study. His first chapter depicts the challenge to posed by the liberating trends of the 1960s and the new (meaning the United States) they spawned. next two chapters introduce the intellectual reaction of neo-conservatives and the popular resistance spearheaded by the Christian Right. following six chapters cover the culture wars per se, largely in the 1980s and 1990s. They examine the conflicts over racial issues and theories; feminism and gay rights; the media and pornography; and public schools; postmodernism in the academy; and interpretations of American history. A brief conclusion declares that the culture wars over these issues ended with the twenty-first century or perhaps were transcended. Hartman calls the 1960s a watershed decade. initial challenge to normative America came from the New Left, radicalized by the struggles for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. By the 1970s, this challenge had morphed into the identity movements, principally Black power and feminism, but also advocacy for gay rights, Chicanos, and Native Americans. Unlike radical confrontations of the sixties, these movements constituted ongoing organized efforts to alter the status quo, and were soon rooted in federal regulations, university practices, and popular media. An intellectual reaction among former liberals, soon dubbed neoconservatives, opposed the New Left assault on traditional values and institutions. Evangelical Christians had more tangible grievances against secular humanism in public education, the feminist challenge to the family, and gay liberation, among other things. Their impassioned resistance made partisans like the Reverend Jerry Falwell into media favorites. These developments foreshadowed the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. progressive Left was the proactive agent in the subsequent clashes; while these initiatives were opposed on the Right with both intellectual arguments and attempts to mobilize public opinion. Hartman's material ranges from television shows to Supreme Court decisions, but he succeeds in keeping the intellectual content in the foreground. In this respect, the volume provides a valuable contribution to the intellectual history of these decades. chapter on The Color Line, for example, begins with the transition from advocacy for colourblind policies to affirmative action and the controversies it spawned. chapter further analyzes critical race theory and its allegations of institutional racism, biological theories of racial difference and the Bell Curve, culture of poverty explanations of economic deprivation, and the implications for welfare. Spike Lee's movie, Do the Right Thing, dramatized some of these latter issues, provoking conflicting views. …

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