Modern America A Documentary History Of The Nation Since 1945

This primary source reader assembles key documents and firsthand accounts that are emblematic of American life from the end of World War II to the present. Designed to complement a core text for a typical post-1945 U.S. history course, the book offers conciseness and selectivity with balanced coverage of domestic and foreign, societal and cultural issues grouped together chronologically. The readings afford students compelling and sometimes startling insights into the nation's postwar adaptation to its new position of global power and responsibility, wealth, and rapid social change; on through years of energy and ambition, conflict and tragedy, to the post-Vietnam malaise and the rise of Ronald Reagan, the frenzied nineties, and the arrival of the new millennium. Each chapter includes an introduction that sets the documents in historical context, a biographical sketch of a significant person of the time, study questions, and suggestions for further reading.

The second edition of Dr. Gary A. Donaldson’s highly successful textbook The Making of Modern America, introduces students to the cultural, social and political paths the United States has traveled from the end of WWII to the present day.

The third edition of Dr. Gary A. Donaldson's highly successful textbook The Making of Modern America, introduces students to the cultural, social and political paths the United States has traveled from the end of WWII to the present day. While deftly cataloging the sweeping changes and major events in America from "Dewey Defeats Truman" through the election of Donald Trump, this newly updated edition never loses touch with that American history taking place at the level of the people. This edition details not just the United States' rich cultural history, but elegantly repositions it as integral to our understanding of any portion of this country's past. Donaldson provides a factual foundation for students and then pushes them to interpret those facts, framing the discussions essential to any complete study of American history.

Encompassing political, social, and cultural issues, this primary source reader allows students to hear the voices of the past, giving a richer understanding of American society since 1945. Comprises over 50 documents, which incorporate political, social, and cultural history and encompass the viewpoints of ordinary people as well a variety of leaders An extended introduction explains to students how to think and work like historians by using primary sources Includes both written texts and photographs Headnotes contextualize the documents and questions encourage students to engage critically with the sources

The two men on the screen could not know what was to come in their lives, and what was to happen to a nation as elections went electric. Donaldson (history, Xavier U.) concentrates wisely on the political developments and the fine points of the first media-driven presidential election campaign, when both Kennedy and Nixon were feeling their way across a political and journalistic minefield. He covers the debates, of course, but also carefully examines the marketing of the candidates, the political and electoral fallout of campaign events, and the reasons why those haunting images are etched deep into every campaign since. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The 1964 campaign was a turning point in the nation’s politics and one of the rare elections in American history marked by sharp ideological divisions. Differences over race relations, the Vietnam War, and federal power divided the parties, and racial issues dominated the campaign as candidates clashed over the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Racial factions disrupted the Democratic Convention and George Wallace openly courted white supremacists. The election took place amid national turmoil and great historic events such as Freedom Summer, the murder of three civil rights activists in Mississippi, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Seldom had the nation faced a starker choice. The election proved to be a watershed moment in American political history—but not in the way most contemporaries viewed it. Democrat Lyndon Johnson trounced Republican Barry Goldwater in a huge landslide. To most observers at the time, liberalism rode triumphant and conservatism crumbled, with some even talking of the demise of the Republican Party. But it was not to be, as the liberal wave crashed almost immediately and conservatives came to dominate a resurgent Republican Party in the late twentieth century. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

The city of Manila is uniquely significant to Philippine, Southeast Asian and world history. It played a key role in the rise of Western colonial mercantilism in Asia, the extinction of the Spanish Empire and the ascendancy of the USA to global imperial hegemony, amongst other events. This book examines British and American writing on the city, situating these representations within scholarship on empire, orientalism and US, Asian and European political history. Through analysis of novels, memoirs, travelogues and journalism written about Manila by Westerners since the early eighteenth century, Tom Sykes builds a picture of Western attitudes towards the city and the wider Philippines, and the mechanics by which these came to dominate the discourse. This study uncovers to what extent Western literary tropes and representational models have informed understandings of the Philippines, in the West and elsewhere, and the types of counter-narrative which have emerged in the Philippines in response to them.

This book examines how presidents from Nixon to Obama have faced the challenges of global leadership in a dramatically changing world—one with more limited resources and an increasing number of threatening challengers. The immediate post-World War II era was undeniably a period of American power and influence. Even during the Cold War, the United States was the leader of the West, exerting wide-ranging power internationally. But beginning with the Vietnam War, America began experiencing a series of setbacks and challenges to its power. The Post-Heroic Presidency: Leveraged Leadership in an Age of Limits examines how U.S. presidents have attempted to reverse or contend with this new era of limited power in which presidential leadership is hamstrung due to an increasingly globalized and interdependent world—one where power is more diffuse and the system of checks and balances bind a president in an age of hyper-partisanship. The book examines presidents of the 20th and 21st centuries, explaining how the first U.S. president to confront this new age was Richard Nixon, who—along with Henry Kissinger—developed a sophisticated approach to deal with the recalibration of American power. It documents how other recent presidents have either tried to make peace with limited power (Jimmy Carter), reverse the decline (Ronald Reagan), ignore the implications of limits (George W. Bush), or find ways to lead that were less ambitious, more prudent, and less unilateral (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama). In the cases of Clinton and Obama, this shift to using "soft power," persuasion, and multilateralism earned them criticism that they are "weak," thereby undermining their efforts to lead—both at home and abroad.