A History of Our Time Readings on Postwar America

by Chafe, William H.; Sitkoff, Harvard

• ISBN13: 9780195116199
• ISBN10: 0195116194
• Edition: 5th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-01-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This popular and comprehensive anthology presents cogent, provocative articles from differing political perspectives on major issues in post-War America. In addition to articles by leading historians, the editors have assembled representative first-person accounts of various issues by thosewho have contributed to the shaping of America's rich history, including Joseph McCarthy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bill Clinton. This fifth edition has been considerably revised to incorporate up-to-date articles on the most significant issues facing contemporary America. With lively andenlightening introductions to each section and headnotes providing a context for the article, A History of Our Time helps students make sense of the past fifty years in America's sometimes tumultuous but always fascinating history.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
PART 1: THE COLD WAR ABROAD AND AT HOME	1	(68)
The Cold War Begins	7	(7)
Thomas G. Paterson
The Necessity for Containment	14	(6)
George F. Kennan
Are We Only Paying Lip Service to Peace?	20	(6)
Henry A. Wallace
American Firmness vs. Soviet Aggression	26	(6)
Clark Clifford
The Truman Doctrine	32	(4)
Harry S Truman
NSC-68: A Report to the National Security Council	36	(5)
HUAC Investigates Hollywood	41	(9)
The Internal Communist Menace	50	(3)
Joseph R. McCarthy
The Age of McCarthyism	53	(16)
Ellen W. Schrecker
PART 2: THE POLITICS OF THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY	69	(70)
The Ideology of the Liberal Consensus	71	(22)
Godfrey Hodgson
A Revisionist View of Eisenhower	93	(15)
Stephen E. Ambrose
How Good a President Was John F. Kennedy?	108	(13)
Lance Morrow
Losing Ground: Discredited Liberalism	121	(18)
Charles Murray
PART 3: CIVIL RIGHTS	139	(56)
So Much History, So Much Future: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Second Coming of America	143	(16)
Vincent Harding
Letter from a Birmingham Jail	159	(14)
Martin Luther King
Message to the Grass Roots	173	(10)
Malcolm X
From Protest to Politics	183	(12)
Bayard Rustin
PART 4: THE CHALLENGE TO SEXISM	195	(62)
Women's Consciousness and the Southern Black Movement	199	(11)
Sara Evans
Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory	210	(12)
bell hooks
Women Against Feminism	222	(17)
Rebecca Klatch
Roe v. Wade, 1973	239	(5)
Justice Harry A. Blackmun
The Emergence of Gay Liberation	244	(13)
Estelle Freedman
John D'Emilio
PART 5: VIETNAM AND THE YEARS OF POLARIZATION	257	(104)
Vietnam in Historical Perspective	263	(8)
John Garry Clifford
Causes of the War	271	(6)
Leslie Gelb
One Morning in the War	277	(20)
Richard Hammer
The Port Huron Statement
Students for a Democratic Society	291	(6)
``Dump Johnson''	297	(12)
William H. Chafe
Letter to the Draftboard	309	(4)
William Jefferson Clinton
You Don't Need a Weatherman To Know Which Way the Wind Blows	313	(4)
Karin Ashley
Up Against the Ivy Wall	317	(16)
Jerry Avorn
Rise and Fall of a Counterculture	333	(14)
Allen J. Matusow
The Forgotten American	347	(14)
Peter Schrag
PART 6: POLITICS OF THE 1970s AND 1980s	361	(50)
Watergate	367	(20)
Jonathan Schell
America's Crisis of Confidence	387	(6)
Jimmy Carter
``The Second American Revolution''	393	(6)
Ronald W. Reagan
Reagan's America: A Capital Offense	399	(12)
Kevin P. Phillips
PART 7: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?	411	(68)
As the World Turns	415	(10)
Robert B. Reich
The Urban Underclass in Advanced Industrial Society	425	(22)
William Julius Wilson
Facing a New World Order	447	(9)
George C. Herring
Questions of Race Run Deep for Foe of Preferences	456	(15)
Barry Bearak
Great Xpectations	471	(8)
Margot Hornblower
Suggestions for Further Reading	479