James Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love

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James Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. 336. Cloth $49.95.

Most commentators agree that the shift rightward in U.S. politics began in the late 1960s, when Richard Nixon's "silent majority" reacted against radical antiwar protesters, militant Black Power advocates, and urban violence and abandoned the Democratic Party. Nixon's victory in the 1968 presidential election, and his resounding defeat of George McGovern in 1972, signaled a Republican takeover of national politics that remained virtually undisturbed for thirty years. During that time Republicans won seven of ten presidential elections, and conservatives shaped domestic social and political issues from abortion rights and affirmative action to "law and order" policies.

Why this shift from the New Deal liberal consensus to conservatism occurred has become a subject of growing interest for social and political historians. …