Newt Gingrich: The Rise and Fall of a Party Entrepreneur

a free program from the NYU Brademas Center

Registration required, please register here

Join virtually for an evening Salon Series conversation featuring Matthew Green, Co-Author of, Newt Gingrich: The Rise and Fall of a Party Entrepreneur; Professor and Chair, Department of Politics, The Catholic University of America and The Honorable Ron Christie, Founder & President, Christie Strategies LLC; Instructor, NYU Washington, DC.

The discussion will focus on Green’s work: Newt Gingrich is one of the most polarizing and consequential figures in US politics. First elected to the House of Representatives in 1978, he rose from a minority party backbencher to become the first Republican Speaker of the House in forty years. Though much has been written about Gingrich, accounts of his time in Congress are incomplete and often skewed. In their book Newt Gingrich: The Rise and Fall of a Party Entrepreneur, political scientists Matthew N. Green and Jeffrey Crouch draw from newly uncovered archival material, original interviews, and other data to provide a fresh and insightful look at Gingrich’s entire congressional career. Green and Crouch argue that Gingrich is best understood as a “party entrepreneur,” someone who works primarily to achieve their congressional party’s collective goals. From the moment he entered Congress, Gingrich was laser-focused on achieving two party-related objectives—a Republican majority in the House and a more conservative society—as well as greater influence for himself.