Stayin Alive Summary

At its heart, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class by historian Jefferson Cowie is about the political change of the white working-class from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Chronicling why working-class laborers, such as Dewey Burton, who the author describes as a …,” radically changed political parties from New Deal Democrats to Reagan Republicans, Cowie primarily argues that examining the political voter base of the working-class in the 1970s demonstrates how the idea of “the working class” was crumbling at this time, and that “[i]t died of the many external assaults upon it, yes, but mostly of its own internal weaknesses.” Stayin’ Alive is a sensational study inside a mass political transformation of a social …show more content…
Working-class laborers like Burton, who were originally New Deal Democrats, radically shifted political ideologies during the Election of 1972, which was between Republican President Richard Nixon, who was running for his second term, and the Democratic Candidate George McGovern. Both candidates at this time, Cowie mentions, were attempting to devise strategies “to woo white working-class voters away from the party of Roosevelt.” To laborers like Burton, their political allegiance aligned with the famous governor from Alabama, George Wallace, who, “among northern wage earners… Wallace’s populist anti-elitism, anti-crime, and anti-busing messages worked best, but his overt embrace of segregation, his snarling rhetoric, and petty resentments failed.” All in all, with Wallace losing to McGovern for the Democratic nomination, Burton voted for McGovern, but it would be Richard Nixon who would stunningly win his …show more content…
One aspects of the book that is glaringly obvious is the author’s ability to interweave storytelling with insightful analysis. This made reading the book pass by effortlessly and made understanding the changes Cowie describes noticeable. Additionally, the book is well researched, focusing on personal journals and newspaper headlines to detail the working-class laborers perspective, which offered the narrative a fresh feel that never felt stale. Moreover, what is most astonishing about Stayin’ Alive is how Cowie utilizes songs and musical artists to show how diverse activism was in the United States at this time. Contrarily, a constructive point to make is that much of what Cowie details in his book without the use of images. While this is one section between the first and second section containing images, much of what Cowie describes could have further benefited from more images being placed throughout the book. Additionally, more attention to the impact and influence of women during this time period was absolutely addressed in the book, but more attention could have added another layer of depth to the