"Against the Wind completes Neal Gabler's magisterial biography of Ted Kennedy, but it also unfolds the epic, tragic story of the fall of liberalism and the destruction of political morality in America. With Richard Nixon having stilled the liberal wind that once propelled Kennedy's--and his fallen brothers'--political crusades, Ted Kennedy faced a lonely battle. As Republicans pressed Reaganite dogmas of individual freedom and responsibility and Democratic centrists fell into line, Kennedy was left as the most powerful voice legislating on behalf of those society would neglect or punish: the poor, the working class, and African Americans ... Tracing Kennedy's life from the wilderness of the Reagan years through the compromises of the Clinton era, from his rage against the craven cruelty of George W. Bush to his hope that Barack Obama would deliver on Kennedy's lifetime effort on behalf of universal health care, Gabler unfolds Kennedy's heroic legislative work against the backdrop of a nation grown lost and fractured"--Dust jacket flap.
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