Isaac Butler presents The Perfect Moment

It's 1988, the final year of the Reagan presidency, and the curtain is closing on the Cold War. In the absence of external adversaries, the American public is on the precipice of war with itself. The religious right, newly ascendant and emboldened, is determined to seize control of America's future. And the first battles will be fought over, of all things, contemporary art.

In The Perfect Moment, cultural historian Isaac Butler reexamines this pivotal, misunderstood American era. Archconservatives like Jesse Helms, Pat Buchanan, and Pat Robertson fixed their sights on artists including Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, and Karen Finley, capitalizing on the provocative politics of their work to stir a nascent evangelical coalition into moral panic. It was at this moment, Butler argues, that the far right perfected the tactics it still uses today to whip its base into frenzy-from banning books and sanitizing American history, to spreading medical misinformation. All too relevant today, The Perfect Moment is an incisive and meticulously researched account of this crucial period and a stirring ode to the power of the creative spirit.

Isaac Butler is author of the NBCC Award winner The Method and the coauthor of The World Only Spins Forward. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York magazine, Slate, American Theatre, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, The Washington Post and more. He created the podcast Lend Me Your Ears, co-hosted the podcast Working, and co-created the multimedia production Real Enemies. Butler teaches theater history and performance at NYU. He lives in Brooklyn.

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