(CNN) -- Rick Perlstein could have called his book "Paranoia." Richard Nixon was "the guy who exploited these tensions to create a new kind of politics," says Rick Perlstein. If Perlstein's history of the 1960s and early '70s in America has a throughline, it's mistrust. Parents don't trust their children. Enlisted men don't trust their officers. Blacks don't trust whites, Southerners don't trust Northerners, the Silent Majority doesn't trust the Intellectual Establishment, and -- soon enough -- nobody trusts the government. And in the midst of it all was Richard Nixon: Red-baiter, former vice president, failed gubernatorial nominee, punch line, political strategist and president, a master at playing both sides to maintain his hold on power. In doing so, he provided a roadmap for his successors.
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"Nixonland" is Rick Perlstein's history of the '60s and early '70s
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Central character is Richard Nixon, who exploited era's tensions for his ends
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Book shows how politics and pop culture intertwined -- and created gaps
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End result? We're still living in Nixonland, author says
It also saw the rise of what @placeholder, in a major 1969 speech, termed the "Silent Majority" -- older, more conservative Americans buffeted on all sides by change, taking refuge in the familiar.