Introduction: what is the Sunbelt ... and why is it important? 1. Convergence, metropolitanization, and anticommunism; 2. Race, rights, and the liberal consensus; 3. Wars against liberalism; 4. Southern, suburban, and Sunbelt strategies; 5. Mobilizing the religious right in the politicized 'Bible Belt'; 6. Reagan's Sunbelt, Reagan's America; 7. Shades of red, shades of blue; Epilogue. Sunbelt politics in the twenty-first century.
This book analyzes the political culture of the American Sunbelt since the end of World War II.
Sean P. Cunningham is Associate Professor of History at Texas Tech University. A decorated teacher, he holds a PhD in Modern American History from the University of Florida and teaches broadly in twentieth-century US history, while specializing in the history of post-1945 American political culture. His first book, Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right, was published in 2010.
'For forty-some years, pundits and scholars have portrayed the
Sunbelt as a free-market haven for strip malls, megachurches and
metropolitan sprawl - and the bastion of Barry Goldwater and Ronald
Reagan conservatism. With great breadth and care, Sean Cunningham
tracks the long history of this region's rightward drift and its
pivotal role in reddening American political culture. Yet with
great creativity and innovation, he also depicts the Sunbelt in
refreshingly textured terms as a place of remarkable diversity,
adaptation, contestation, and ceaseless transformation. Nuanced and
engaging, Cunningham's beautifully crafted text offers an
invaluable glimpse at how this trendsetting region has evolved in
the past generation, and where it (and hence the nation) is headed
in the next.' Darren Dochuk, Washington University in St Louis,
author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion,
Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism
'Sean Cunningham has produced a lively, comprehensive, and textured
synthesis on the history of the American Sunbelt that masterfully
integrates the past two decades of burgeoning scholarship. With
layers of movement, institutional, social, electoral, and economic
history organized in a tight chronology, Cunningham makes the
region legible to a wide audience. American Politics in the Postwar
Sunbelt is a valuable resource for teaching undergraduates the
history of the region and the post–World War II era.' Michelle
Nickerson, Loyola University Chicago
'Sean Cunningham has written what has long been needed - an astute
analysis of the politics of the Sunbelt. Seeing the region in all
its variations and permutations, Cunningham's insightful analysis
of the growth of conservatism in the Sunbelt provides historians
and the casual reader with an elegantly written study of how
political culture developed in the post-World War II West and
South. A first-rate political history.' Gregory L. Schneider,
Emporia State University
'Sean Cunningham offers a compelling overview of Sunbelt politics
since World War II. He persuasively demonstrates that although the
Sunbelt became the base of the contemporary Republican Party, its
political history is more contested and ambiguous than is often
thought. Cunningham's analysis connecting political and policy
outcomes to economic and demographic transitions, as well as his
account of how federal money helped shape the region's development,
are especially insightful.' Timothy N. Thurber, Virginia
Commonwealth University
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