White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism Free Audiobook Download by Kevin M. Kruse

White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism is a book about how white middle-class liberalism took root in the United States in an historically black, working class city called Atlanta as a result of decades of racism. This book focuses on how the racial segregation of African Americans prevented them from participating in democracy, which caused an abandonment of liberal values among whites who instead embraced conservative politics. One way that the author attempts to explain this shift is by discussing white supremacy and its influence on southern conservatism at various points in American history.

Kevin M. Kruse's book White Flight examines how the Georgia city of Atlanta became a stronghold for modern American conservatism over the course of two decades.

On July 17, 1948, the Atlanta City Council voted against a proposed ordinance to desegregate the city's public accommodations. On that day, 68 percent of the city's white residents abandoned what they perceived as a morally-corrupt metropolis in pursuit of suburban havens.

"White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism" by Kevin Kruse is a sweeping yet personal account of the history of American conservatism. The author, an associate professor in history at Princeton University, has written about the subject before in his book "One Nation Under God." In "White Flight," he argues that US liberalism and city planning were responsible for creating conservative strongholds like Atlanta that are now beset by crime, poverty, and segregation. The audiobook version of the book is read by Aaron Williamson, who gives a plainspoken narration to Kruse's well-researched argument.

White flight refers to the phenomenon of people moving away from urban areas, especially in cities with large black populations, in order to live outside of racially integrated neighborhoods. The author argues that white flight is a response to being "trapped in the middle" between two conflicting identities—black and white. He also says that during this time, conservatives were occupying an increasingly marginalized position within the city.

White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism is a research-driven history of how the population boom in Atlanta, Georgia transformed the city from a powerhouse of progressive thinking to one of conservatism in 10 short years.