The Index: Modern American Political History

Modern American Political History

~~A Reading List~~

[Click on the name to link to my review.]

Historiography and Broader Trends

XX Bennett, David Harry. The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

XX Brinkley, Alan. Liberalism and Its Discontents. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998.

XX Foner, Eric. 1984. "Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?" History Workshop. no. 17: 57-80.

XX Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

XX Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Imperial Presidency. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

Late 19^th Century to Progressive Era

XX Cohen, Andrew Wender. The Racketeer's Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900-1940. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

XX Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991.

XX Goodwyn, Lawrence. The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Bottom of Form

XX Lears, T. J. Jackson. Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

XX McGerr, Michael E. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920. New York: Free Press, 2003.

XX Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

World War I and Woodrow Wilson

XX Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: A. Knopf, 1999.

XX Kennedy, David M. Over Here: The First World War and American Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Twenties

XX Larson, Edward J. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. New York: BasicBooks, 1997.

XX Parrish, Michael E. Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920-1941. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.

FDR: Depression and World War II

XX Keegan, John. The Second World War. New York: Viking, 1990.

XX Leuchtenburg, William Edward. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940. The New American Nation series. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

Cold War and Fifties

XX Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. (Update post-Cold War)

XX McCullough, David G. Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

XX Offner, Arnold A. Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945-1953. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2002. (Read against Gaddis)

XX Parmet, Herbert S. The Democrats: The Years After FDR. New York: Macmillan, 1976.

XX Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998.

The Sixties: JFK, LBJ, Vietnam

XX Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

XX Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

XX Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest: David Halberstam. 1972.

XX Herring, George C. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975. New York: Wiley, 1979.

XX Matusow, Allen J. The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.

The Seventies: Nixon, Watergate

XX Greene, John Robert. The Limits of Power: The Nixon and Ford Administrations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

XX Lassiter, Matthew D. The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.

XX Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. New York: Scribner, 2008.

XX Schulman, Bruce J. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. New York: Free Press, 2001.

The Eighties: Reagan

XX Wilentz, Sean. The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. New York, NY: Harper, 2008.Bottom of Form

XX Wills, Garry. Reagan's America: Innocents at Home. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987.

Clinton to Present

XX Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin Press, 2004.

XX Dershowitz, Alan M. Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000. Oxford: New York, 2001.

XX Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.

XX Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. New York: Knopf, 2006.