Reform And Reaction In Twentieth Century American Politics

This work provides an overview and analysis of the rise, development, decline, and end of liberal reform movements and their alternation with periods of reaction in the United States from the 1890s through the mid-1980s. Broesamle's volume reassesses the course of U.S. political history over the last century and presents a new theory of American politics that reinterprets the way the system actually produces change. He relates the life cycles of reform movements to the key social, economic, and cultural developments of their eras, investigates commonalities among movements, and assesses the extent to which each movement is individual. No other history of liberalism has propounded the same thesis. The work is ambitious in its intellectual breadth and inclusiveness, and exceptionally comprehensive in both design and execution. Reform and Reaction answers the questions: What is the exact nature of the reform-reaction rhythm? What gives rise to it? Is it truly cyclical? Does each crest and trough resemble its prior and succeeding counterpart, or are they distinct? If there is a resemblance, can these political transformations be expected to repeat themselves in the future? The answers to these questions will alter previous perceptions of the relationship between the political realm and society at large and especially with respect to such phenomena as upheavals of youth, the rise and decline of campaigns on behalf of workers and farmers, feminist movements, and changing moral standards. The study is divided into three major sections: Reform, Resistance, and Reaction, each of which is preceded by a short introductory essay that establishes its fundamental direction. By employing historical examples and resurveying the chronological territory chapter by chapter, the study details the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Kennedy-Johnson period of the 60s as well as the reactionary periods of the 1920s, the 1950s, and the 1970s and 1980s. Broesamle establishes links between political trends on one hand, and social and intellectual trends on the other, that have not been delineated before. Reform and Reaction in Twentieth Century American Politics has a wide appeal to a very broad audience: professors and teachers in the fields of twentieth century U.S. history and political science, practicing political professionals, journalists covering the American political scene, and any informed generalist interested in learning more about historical and contemporary politics in the U.S. The book would be an addition to the reading lists for graduate and upper division classes on virtually any aspect of American political history from the 1890s to the mid-1980s as well as courses on current political affairs.

The United States in the Long Twentieth Century explores the nature of American politics and society in the period from 1900 to the present day, illuminating both the changes and the continuities. This was a period largely characterized by exceptional growth and international power, though one also assailed by the crises and divisions that Michael Heale carefully examines. A strength of the book is its integration of political with social history, and it thus explores a range of social, demographic and economic phenomena that have been central to American history in the long twentieth century, such as immigration and ethnicity, the labour, civil rights and environmental movements, and the role and achievements of women. This new and fully revised edition of the seminal student textbook Twentieth-Century America has been updated throughout to take recent scholarship in the field into account and also includes a number of important new features, including: - a brand new chapter on the years from 2000 onwards, covering 9/11, the financial crisis, and the rise of Barack Obama; - substantial revisions to Part III, covering 1969 to the present day, and in particular to the material on Reagan, Clinton, African Americans, immigrants, the growth of the financial sector and (de)regulation and global warming; one theme is the limits of conservatism and the resilience of liberalism; - greater emphasis on the United States in a transnational world and within the context of the rise of globalization. The United States in the Long Twentieth Century is a detailed guide to American political and social history since 1900 and an essential text for all students interested in the modern history of the United States of America.

Realignment: The Theory that Changed the Way We Think About American Politics tells the dramatic story of how a new approach to American politics emerged in the afternmath of Harry Truman's stunning 1948 election upset victory. This approach realignment theory held that critical elections such as those of the Civil War era, the 1890's, and the 1930's shaped politics for decades to come. Theodore Rosenof details how realignment theory emerged as the predominant explanation of electoral change and how, after decades of analysis, it remains a subject of continuing influence and controversy. The first history of this important theory, Realignment weaves history and political science into a compelling look at American elections."

Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth connects the rise of film and the rise of America as a cultural center and twentieth-century world power. Silent film, Paula Cohen reveals, allowed America to sever its literary and linguistic ties to Europe and answer the call by nineteenth-century writers like Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman for an original form of expression compatible with American strengths and weaknesses. When film finally began to talk in 1927, the medium had already done its work. It had helped translate representation into a dynamic visual form and had "Americanized" the world. Cohen explores the way film emerged as an American medium through its synthesis of three basic elements: the body, the landscape, and the face. Nineteenth-century American culture had already charged these elements with meaning--the body through vaudeville and burlesque, landscape through landscape painting and moving panoramas, and the face through portrait photography. Integrating these popular forms, silent film also developed genres that showcased each of its basic elements: the body in comedy, the landscape in the western, and the face in melodrama. At the same time, it helped produce a new idea of character, embodied in the American movie star. Cohen's book offers a fascinating new perspective on American cultural history. It shows how nineteenth-century literature can be said to anticipate twentieth-century film--how Douglas Fairbanks was, in a sense, successor to Walt Whitman. And rather than condemning the culture of celebrity and consumption that early Hollywood helped inspire, the book highlights the creative and democratic features of the silent-film ethos. Just as notable, Cohen champions the concept of the "American myth" in the wake of recent attempts to discredit it. She maintains that American silent film helped consolidate and promote a myth of possibility and self-making that continues to dominate the public imagination and stands behind the best impulses of our contemporary world.

The American economy has provided a level of well-being that has consistently ranked at or near the top of the international ladder. A key source of this success has been widespread participation in political and economic processes. In The Government and the American Economy, leading economic historians chronicle the significance of America’s open-access society and the roles played by government in its unrivaled success story. America’s democratic experiment, the authors show, allowed individuals and interest groups to shape the structure and policies of government, which, in turn, have fostered economic success and innovation by emphasizing private property rights, the rule of law, and protections of individual freedom. In response to new demands for infrastructure, America’s federal structure hastened development by promoting the primacy of states, cities, and national governments. More recently, the economic reach of American government expanded dramatically as the populace accepted stronger limits on its economic freedoms in exchange for the increased security provided by regulation, an expanded welfare state, and a stronger national defense.

Focusing on five Los Angeles environmental policy debates between 1920 and 1950, Sarah Elkind investigates how practices in American municipal government gave business groups political legitimacy at the local level as well as unanticipated influence over federal politics. Los Angeles's struggles with oil drilling, air pollution, flooding, and water and power supplies expose the clout business has had over government. Revealing the huge disparities between big business groups and individual community members in power, influence, and the ability to participate in policy debates, Elkind shows that business groups secured their political power by providing Los Angeles authorities with much-needed services, including studying emerging problems and framing public debates. As a result, government officials came to view business interests as the public interest. When federal agencies looked to local powerbrokers for project ideas and political support, local business interests influenced federal policy, too. Los Angeles, with its many environmental problems and its dependence upon the federal government, provides a distillation of national urban trends, Elkind argues, and is thus an ideal jumping-off point for understanding environmental politics and the power of business in the middle of the twentieth century.

In no other country has health care served as such a volatile flashpoint of ideological conflict. America has endured a century of rancorous debate on health insurance, and despite the passage of legislation in 2010, the battle is not yet over. This book is a history of how and why the United States became so stubbornly different in health care, presented by an expert with unsurpassed knowledge of the issues. Tracing health-care reform from its beginnings to its current uncertain prospects, Paul Starr argues that the United States ensnared itself in a trap through policies that satisfied enough of the public and so enriched the health-care industry as to make the system difficult to change. He reveals the inside story of the rise and fall of the Clinton health plan in the early 1990sùand of the Gingrich counterrevolution that followed. And he explains the curious tale of how Mitt RomneyÆs reforms in Massachusetts became a model for Democrats and then follows both the passage of those reforms under Obama and the explosive reaction they elicited from conservatives. Writing concisely and with an even hand, the author offers exactly what is needed as the debate continuesùa penetrating account of how health care became such treacherous terrain in American politics.

This volume in Oxford's A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise, readable narrative of the vast span of American history, from the earliest human migrations to the early twenty-first century when the United States loomed as a global power and comprised a complex multi-cultural society of more than 300 million people. The narrative is organized around major interpretive themes, with facts and dates introduced as needed to illustrate these themes. The emphasis throughout is on clarity and accessibility to the interested non-specialist.