A Companion to Post-1945 America

by Agnew, Jean-Christophe; Rosenzweig, Roy

• ISBN13: 9780631223252
• ISBN10: 0631223258
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-27
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

A Companion to Post-1945 America is an original collection of twenty-six essays by key scholars on the history and historiography of the period. As the twenty-first century begins, post-World War II scholarship joins the historical canon with a wealth of new material. The contributors to this volume are the most prominent scholars in their respective fields, and each essay analyzes and categorizes the historical literature of the post-1945 period over a wide variety of topics. The coverage includes family, the media, ethnicity, labor, social movements, politics, and foreign policy. Each essay contains a select bibliography to guide further research, and the volume includes a review section that focuses on eight popular and influential historical works. For students, historians, and general readers of modern American history, this book is a milestone that will set the standard for post-World War II American historiography.

Author Biography

Jean-Christophe Agnew is Professor of American Studies and History at Yale University. He is the author of Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought (1989) and of a number of articles on the history of market society and consumer culture.

Roy Rosenzweig is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History and director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. He is the author, co-author, and co-editor of a number of books, including The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (1998), which won the Historic Preservation Book Prize for Best Book of 1998.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	viii
About the Contributors	ix
Introduction	xiii
Part I Society and Culture	1	(152)
Family and Demography in Postwar America: A Hazard of New Fortunes?	3	(17)
Stephen Lassonde
The Power of Place: Race, Political Economy, and Identity in the Postwar Metropolis	20	(24)
Robert O. Self
Thomas J. Sugrue
American Religion Since 1945	44	(20)
James T. Fisher
Time Out: Leisure and Tourism	64	(14)
Susan G. Davis
Mass Media: From 1945 to the Present	78	(18)
Susan J. Douglas
What the Traffic Bares: Popular Music ``Back in the USA''	96	(17)
Allen Tullos
The Visual Arts in Post-1945 America	113	(21)
Erika Doss
American Intellectual History and Social Thought Since 1945	134	(19)
Patrick N. Allitt
Part II People and Movements	153	(190)
American Political Culture Since 1945	155	(20)
Richard H. King
Hyphen Nation: Ethnicity in American Intellectual and Political Life	175	(17)
Matthew Frye Jacobson
Labor During the American Century: Work, Workers, and Unions Since 1945	192	(19)
Joshua B. Freeman
The Historiography of the Struggle for Black Equality Since 1945	211	(24)
Kevin Gaines
Postwar Women's History: The ``Second Wave'' or the End of the Family Wage?	235	(25)
Nancy MacLean
Sexuality and the Movements for Sexual Liberation	260	(17)
Beth Bailey
A Movement of Movements: The Definition and Periodization of the New Left	277	(26)
Van Gosse
The Triumph of Conservatives in a Liberal Age	303	(25)
David L. Chappell
Modern Environmentalism	328	(15)
Ian Tyrrell
Part III Politics and Foreign Policy	343	(176)
Beyond the Presidential Synthesis: Reordering Political Time	345	(26)
Julian E. Zelizer
McCarthyism and the Red Scare	371	(14)
Ellen Schrecker
The Politics of ``The Least Dangerous Branch'': The Court, the Constitution, and Constitutional Politics Since 1945	385	(21)
Mary L. Dudziak
The Cold War in Europe	406	(20)
Carolyn Eisenberg
Off the Beach: The United States, Latin America, and the Cold War	426	(20)
Greg Grandin
The United States and East Asia in the Postwar Era	446	(18)
James I. Matray
Washington Quagmire: US Presidents and the Vietnam Wars -- A Pattern of Intervention	464	(15)
David Hunt
The End of the Cold War	479	(22)
David S. Painter
Thomas S. Blanton
From the ``Atomic Age'' to the ``Anti-Nuclear Age'': Nuclear Energy in Politics, Diplomacy, and Culture	501	(18)
J. Samuel Walker
Part IV Essential Reading	519	(38)
J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (1985)	521	(4)
Alan Brinkley
Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom (1995)	525	(4)
Linda Gordon
Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics (1952, 1956, 1965)	529	(5)
Nelson Lichtenstein
Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were (1992)	534	(3)
Elaine Tyler May
Alphonso Pinkney, The Myth of Black Progress (1984)	537	(3)
Robert E. Weems, Jr.
Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (1970)	540	(5)
Robert Westbrook
Victor Navasky, Naming Names (1980)	545	(5)
Jon Wiener
Edward Said, Orientalism (1978)	550	(7)
Melani McAlister
Index	557