Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years

by Pells, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780252067433
• ISBN10: 0252067436
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Table of Contents

PREFACE TO THE 1998 EDITION	xi	(4)
PREFACE TO THE 1984 EDITION	xv	(2)
INTRODUCTION	xvii
I. PROLOGUE--PROGRESSIVISM AND THE 1920S	1	(42)
1. The Dynamics of Prewar Reform	2	(8)
2. The Political Mood of the 1920s	10	(11)
3. Values, Morals, and Life-Styles	21	(12)
4. The Artist in Exile	33	(10)
II. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THOUGHT, 1929-1935	43	(53)
1. Responses to the Crash	43	(6)
2. The Challenge to Liberalism	49	(12)
3. The Attraction to Russia	61	(8)
4. Alternatives to Capitalism	69	(7)
5. The Election of 1932	76	(2)
6. The New Deal and Its Critics	78	(8)
7. Waiting for the Revolution	86	(3)
8. Toward a Social Democracy	89	(7)
III. THE SEARCH FOR COMMUNITY	96	(55)
1. Cultural Radicalism	96	(15)
2. The Appeal of Collectivism	111	(7)
3. The Individual and Society	118	(7)
4. Marx in America	125	(15)
5. The Existential Strain	140	(8)
6. Toward a New Ideology	148	(3)
IV. LITERARY THEORY AND THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUAL	151	(43)
1. The Writer and Society	151	(10)
2. The Nature of Commitment	161	(8)
3. Toward a Proletarian Culture	169	(12)
4. Voices in Oppposition	181	(6)
5. The Radical as Critic	187	(7)
V. DOCUMENTARIES, FICTION, AND THE DEPRESSION	194	(58)
1. The Quest for the Social Fact	195	(7)
2. Novels of Protest, Politics, and the Proletariat	202	(17)
3. Visions of the Apocalypse	219	(7)
4. The Voice of the Self	226	(14)
5. The Conservative Ethic	240	(6)
6. Radicalism and Art: The Achievement of James Agee	246	(6)
VI. THE RADICAL STAGE AND THE HOLLYWOOD FILM IN THE 1930S	252	(40)
1. The Rise and Fall of the Workers' Theater	252	(11)
2. The Appeal of the Mass Media	263	(5)
3. From Little Caesar to Citizen Kane	268	(24)
VII. THE DECLINE OF RADICALISM, 1935-1939	292	(38)
1. The Politics of the Popular Front	292	(7)
2. The Liberal Mind in the Late 1930s	299	(3)
3. Crises at Home and Abroad	302	(8)
4. The Rediscovery of America	310	(9)
5. The End of Ideology	319	(11)
VIII. FROM DEPRESSION TO WAR	330	(35)
1. The Politics of Anti-Stalinism	331	(3)
2. The Pilgrimage of Partisan Review	334	(12)
3. The New Mandarins	346	(16)
4. The Spirit of Pearl Harbor	362	(3)
EPILOGUE	365	(4)
NOTES	369	(26)
BIBLIOGRAPHY	395	(16)
INDEX	411