History 75700-The United States since World War II: Politics and Society

Professor Joshua B. Freeman
Office hours (room 5114.02): Mondays, 3-4 or by appointment
JFreeman@gc.cuny.edu
212-817-8436

All assigned readings have been put on reserve at the Graduate Center library. Almost all the books are available in paperback editions. The books marked * have been ordered at Barnes and Noble. You also can purchase these books on-line. If you use Amazon or Powell’s, please access their websites through the “virtual bookstore” on the GC website homepage, since the library will get a percentage of the purchase price.

Aug. 27: Course Introduction

Sept. 10: The United States at the End of World War II

*John Gunther, Inside U.S.A.
(NOTE: there are several editions of this book; please read either the first edition, published in 1947, or the 1997 New Press reprint of the 1947 edition) -- forward and chapters 1-4, 6-8, 12, 18, 21, 23, 25-26, 32-33, 40-41, 45, 50

Selected reading in contemporary periodicals – see assignment sheet

Sept. 17: Liberalism after the New Deal

*David Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s, introduction and chapters 1, 7-9, 11

*Alan Brinkley, “The New Deal and the Idea of the State,” in Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order

*Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era,” in Fraser and Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order

Robert Griffith, “Dwight Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American History Review 87, no. 1 (Feb. 1982), 87-122

Kevin Mattson, “John Kenneth Galbrath: Liberalism and the Politics of Cultural Critique,” in Nelson Lichtenstein, ed., American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century

Sept. 24: Anti-Communism and the Campaign against Deviance

*Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, entire book except chapters 3 and 9

*David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, introduction and chapters 1-6

Oct. 1: The Cold War

*Thomas McCormick, America’s Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After, 2nd edition, chapters 1-8

Charles S. Maier, “The Politics of productivity: Foundations of American international economic power after World War II,” in Charles S. Maier, In Search of Stability

Melvyn P. Leffler, “American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-48, with Comments by John Lewis Gaddis and Bruce Kuniholm and reply by Leffler, American Historical Review 89, no. 2 (Apr. 1984), 346-400

*Greg Grandin, “Off the Beach: The United States, Latin America, and the Cold War,” in Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig, eds., A Companion to Post-1945 America

Oct. 15: Consumerism

*Liz Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, prologue and chapters 3-8

*Thomas Hines, Populuxe

Oct 22: Civil Rights, Black Power, and Cultural Identity

*Clyde Woods, Development Arrested: Race, Power, and the Blues in the Mississippi Delta, chapters 1-2, 6-9

*Peniel E. Joseph. Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America, chapters to be announced

*Matthew Frye Jacobson, “Hyphen Nation: Ethnicity in American Intellectual and Political Life,” in Agnew and Rosenzweig, eds., A Companion to Post-1945 America

Oct. 29: The Conservative Ascendancy

*Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right

*Jonathan Rieder, “The Rise of the ‘Silent Majority,’” in Fraser and Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order

Nov. 5: Women’s Lives and the Women’s Movement

*Elaine Tyler May, “Cold War – Warm Hearth: Politics and the Family in Postwar America, in Fraser and Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order

Daniel Horowitz, “Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America,” American Quarterly 48, Number 1 (March 1996), pp. 1-42

*Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, chapters 2-6

*Nancy MacLean, “Postwar Women’s History: The ‘Second Wave’ or the End of the Family Wage?” in Agnew and Rosenzweig, eds., A Companion to Post-1945 America

*Beth Bailey, “Sexuality and the Movements for Sexual Liberation,” in Agnew and Rosenzweig, eds., A Companion to Post-1945 America

Nov. 12: Vietnam

*Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience

Nov 19: 1968

*Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, Part One; Part Two, chapters 1, 6-7, 9; Part Three; and Part Five, chapters 5-6

Selected reading in contemporary periodicals – see assignment sheet

Nov. 26: The 1970s

*Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, entire book except chapter 9

Joshua B. Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II, chapter 15

Jefferson Cowie, “’Vigorously Left, Right, and Center’: The Crosscurrents of Working-Class America in the 1970s,” in David Farber and Beth Bailey, eds., America in the Seventies

Dec. 3: The Reagan Revolution

*John Patrick Diggins, Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, preface, introduction, chapters 1, 5-11, and coda

*Thomas Byrne Edsall, “The Changing Shape of Power: A Realignment in Public Policy,” in Fraser and Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order

Dec. 10: The New American Empire

*Jim Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet

*Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War chapters 1-7