Behind the Backlash

“An important study of working-class conservatism that neither romanticizes nor dismisses his subjects. . . . [Durr] succeeds in demonstrating that understanding the causes of white backlash requires attention not just to racism but to related cultural concerns as well.” — Journal of American History

“[This book] is exhaustively researched . . . and persuasively argued by a scholar steeped in the historical and sociological literature. . . . It brings together a great deal of new and valuable material on the urban setting of [Baltimore].” — Journal of Southern History

“Rare has been a scholar who has been capable of merging American class, cultural, political, and urban history into a brilliantly written tome-until now. . . . Kenneth Durr has joined the lonely ranks of Thernstrom and Fass.” — H-1960s

“Durr’s work stands alone atop the growing scholarship examining the postwar urban experience.” — Maryland Historical Magazine

“Durr’s work is thoroughly researched, logically organized, and reasonably argued.” — Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography

“A substantial addition to the literature on working-class politics, the white backlash, the decline of the New Deal coalition, and the Democratic Party’s loss of connection with working-class, urban, ethnic voters in the period from 1940 to 1980.” — Ronald P. Formisano, University of Kentucky