Sale, Kirkpatrick. Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and its
Challenge to the Eastern Establishment. New York: Vintage Books, 1976.
Two books in NameBase, "Yankee and Cowboy War" by Carl Oglesby and
"Power Shift" by Kirkpatrick Sale, are based on a single premise -- that
there has been a more-or-less conscious shift in the source of American
ruling-class power during the postwar period. The Southern Rim (roughly
the states or portions of states south of a line drawn across the country
from North Carolina to just north of San Francisco) is challenging the
traditional control of the Eastern Establishment (Chicago, New York,
Boston, and points between). Sale uses this hook to analyze economic and
electoral changes, while Oglesby develops a rough handle to link the JFK
assassination and Watergate. Both books are solid and valuable, although
this pet premise isn't necessary to either.
Sale's strength for my purposes is his ability to cram nearly 500
names of contemporary political and economic elites into a coherent
narrative, along with useful identifying information on each of them.
While there is definitely a shift to the Rim, it may simply be the case
that as Dixiecrats find new economic power, they begin to realize that
rich folks can get richer by joining the Republican Party. It's fortunate
for NameBase that Sale requires 362 pages of hard data to make this point,
which I was ready to concede on page one. -- D.Brandt
ISBN 0-394-72130-6
Extract the names from this source
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