Perlstein's last book, Nixonland, was one of the best books of twentieth-century history I've read. It was thoroughly researched, well-written, chose interesting vignettes and topics to explain its arguments. Mostly importantly, it made a central point about what American society and politics were actually mostly like during the late 1960s and placed the counter-culture (you know, the hippies) of 1968, despite all the mythologizing, in context: it was marginal.
I hope his new book, The Invisible Bridge, on the mid-1970s is just as enlightening.
BTW, his books are characterized as biographies. While that is the frame he's chosen, this is really a publisher's line. I'd argue that they're much more general political histories or histories about the American mindset. Nixonland had a lot of Nixon biographical material, but more about other politicians, voters and newspaper articles, and historical events only tangentially related to Nixon.
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