Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
 The author's thesis is that Richard Nixon manipulated the political and social events between 1965 and 1972 in a way that shaped the political divisions of the present day. The author frames the divisions of the 1960s as between the "Franklins" and the "Orthogonians", names taken from two social clubs at Nixon's alma mater of Whittier College; the Franklins were the privileged elite, and the Orthogonians the social strivers. The author casts Nixon as the "King of the Orthogonians", who would play upon the growing resentments of "Orthogonians" nationwide (Nixon's "silent majority") to electoral success. Perlstein also presents a broader overview of The Sixties' cultural and political turmoils, including the 1968 Democratic Convention, but, as the book ends with Nixon's reelection in 1972, only peripherally covering Watergate.