Christopher Caldwell's "The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties" is a sweeping but insightful examination into every social, political and legal decision, movement and trend that leaves us where we are today in a polarized nation.
In the book, Caldwell traces the origins of today’s deep discords to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Grief that shrouded the nation after Kennedy’s assassination, Caldwell writes, “gave a tremendous impetus to changes already underway.” Lyndon B. Johnson, who was sworn into office after Kennedy’s death, was able to push through far more ambitious civil rights legislation in 1964 than Kennedy would have been able to do. Most significantly, in the author’s telling, the Civil Rights Act, and social movements that followed, were accelerated and empowered more through court decisions and government agencies than decisions by elected officials.
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