American Contradiction Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now Paul Starr Yale University Press Available in hardcover and as an audiobook. October 14, 2025. Look inside

Video/interviews/reviews*** Events***

How did Americans come to elect Barack Obama-and then Donald Trump? Those choices capture, in a nutshell, what Paul Starr calls the American contradiction.

The whole truth about America, Starr argues in this new history of the United States since the 1950s, has never been contained in one consistent set of values or interests. Our nation was born in the contradiction between freedom and slavery. Today it is beset by a contradiction between a changing people and a resisting nation, a nation with entrenched institutions that have empowered those who fear the changes and look to restore an old America of their imagining.

Starr tells this history from the dual standpoints of the progressive movements that changed the American people and of the movements that emerged in response. Black Americans, he argues, served as a model minority, setting in motion America's twentieth-century revolutions in gender as well as race and rights. With industry's decline and the rise of economic inequality, millions of Americans have felt dispossessed and want the old America back. Trump is their revenge. American Contradiction tells the story of how 1950s America became the almost unrecognizable America of the 2020s.

The argument in 90 seconds
Out of the Twilight Zone and into American Contradiction

CNN Interview: Paul Starr on American Contradiction, October 17, 2025.

With Greg Olear on Prevail, October 31, 2025.
Julian Zelizer interviews Paul Starr on The Long View

Jonathan Alter, "What is the 'American Contradiction,'" Washington Monthly, November 10.
Conversation with Susan Demas, Lincoln Square, November 10.

Review by Glenn Loury
Interview with Glenn Loury on The Glenn Show

Obama, Trump, and the Great American Contradiction. Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps, November 24, 2025.

Understanding Our New World, Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, Southern Illinois University, December 11, 2025.

Coming Events

Past Events

New York, November 3: Institute for Public Knowledge, NYU.With Maria Abascal and Tom Sugrue

Princeton, November 5. Effron Center for the Study of America: How Did We Get Here: One Year AfterTrump's Reelection. With Frances Lee, Nicholas Lemann, and Julian Zelizer. Moderated by Patricia Fernandez Kelly.

Boston, November 12: GBH/Ford Hall Forum. With Randall Kennedy

Washington, D.C. December 4. American Prospect. With Jamelle Bouie and Michael Kazin. Moderator: Janet Hook.

Los Angeles. January 6. Chevalier's Books. With Todd Purdum.

Los Angeles, January 20. UCLA.

Berkeley. January 21, UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy.

San Francisco, January 22. Manny's.

Praise for American Contradiction

"This is the best book I've read that takes on and explicates that seemingly unanswerable question [how to make sense of recent American history]. On almost every page, I learned something new, or saw something in a novel way that helped my understanding of [gestures around to everything]." Greg Olear, "Prevail."

"I highly recommend American Contradiction to anyone seeking to understand how we arrived at our present political moment. . . . An ambitious act of synthesis by one of our most accomplished sociologists of institutions."—Glenn Loury, "The Glenn Show" (Substack)

"Paul Starr, one of the great chroniclers of American institutions, provides a brilliant reinterpretation of the modern political era. His book unpacks the fundamental contradictions that have haunted the body politic since the 1960s. This is a must-read book for sociologists, historians, political scientists, and any reader interested in our nation's political history." Julian Zelizer, Princeton University, and author of In Defense of Partisanship

"If anyone is thinking of preparing a time capsule capable of surviving a catastrophic end to the United States as we know it, they'd do well to find a place in it for Paul Starr's American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now. In a few hundred richly detailed pages, Starr seeks to explain how the United States evolved from a relatively unified people and nation at the end of World War II to a country today wracked by divisions so grave as to threaten its very future as a democracy. ... American Contradiction shows that citizens can mobilize and right the course of the nation's history." Ellen Fitzpatrick, review in Democracy.

"American Contradiction is an extraordinarily instructive analysis of the perplexing character of the United States. Starr's commentary on the journey from Eisenhower to Trump bristles with insight. As I read, I found myself constantly underlining his informative and accessible text." Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and author of Say It Loud! On Race, Law, Culture, and History

"A fascinating examination of the clash between changing family, gender, and sexual norms, racial justice struggles, rightwing political campaigns, and accelerating economic inequality that underlies our current political crises. Eye-opening." Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap

"Anything Paul Starr writes is important to read, and this book is no exception. American Contradiction is a highly sophisticated history of the United States since the 1950s emphasizing the interplay between social movements, politics, culture, law, and social policy." Nelson Lichtenstein, author of A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism