A Progressive History of American Democracy Since 1945: American Dreams, Hard Realities

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A Progressive History of American Democracy Since 1945: American Dreams, Hard Realities offers a social, political, and cultural history of the United States since World War II. Unpacking a period of profound transformation unprecedented in the national experience, this text takes a synthetic approach to the history of the 1940s to the present day. It examines how Americans descended from a mid-century apogee of boundless expectations to the unsettling premise that our contemporary historical moment is fraught with a sense of crisis and national failure. The book’s narrative explores the question of decline and more importantly, how the history of this transformation can point the way toward a recovery of shared national values. Chris J. Magoc also gives extensive treatments to the following: Grassroots movements that have expanded the meaning of American democracy, from the 1950s human rights struggle in the South, to contemporary movements to confront systemic racism and the existential crisis of climate change The resilience of American democracy in the face of antidemocratic forces The impacts of a decades-long economic transformation The consequences of America’s expanding global military footprint and national security state Fracturing of a nation once held together by a post-war liberal consensus and broadly shared societal goals to an America facing an attack from within on empirical truth and democracy itself. This book will be of interest to students of modern U.S. history, social history and American Studies and general readers interested in recent U.S. history. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Preface Chapter 1: A “People’s War” and the Dawn an “American Century” The People’s War The Struggle for Democracy at Home “We Are All Jews Here” “A God-Sanctioned Invincible Holy Power” Notes Further Reading Chapter 2: Containing Communism, Advancing “the American System” “Free Peoples” and an “Iron Curtain” “Dollar Imperialism”: The Marshall Plan and the Berlin Crisis Two Minutes to Midnight Korea: “An Entirely New War” Notes Further Reading Chapter 3: Affluence and Angst: The Politics and Culture of Cold War America “Have You No Sense of Decency?”—America’s Second Red Scare The “End of Ideology” “People of Plenty”: Rising Affluence and Its Consequences A Culture of Conformity The “New Look” Notes Further Reading Chapter 4: Through the Looking Glass: Discontent and Rebellion in the Fifties Rumblings of Anxiety and Dissent Music as a Force for Change “If We Are Wrong, God Almighty Is Wrong” Notes Further Reading Chapter 5: Let Us Begin: The Promise of the Early 1960s A New Frontier Making America What It Must Become “Not a Pax Americana” We Are All Mortal Notes Further Reading Chapter 6: Mississippi to Saigon: The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson and the Turning of the Sixties “A Change Is Gonna Come” “The Decisive Battleground”: Mississippi, Selma, and the Struggle for Voting Rights The “Quality of their Goals”: The Great Society Vietnam: “The Guys on the White Horses” Notes Further Reading Chapter 7: “People of This Generation”: The New Left and the Counter-culture “The Operation of the Machine” “We Must Name That System”: The Antiwar Movement The Radical Possibilities of the Counterculture Notes Further Reading Chapter 8: 1968: The Rupture Vietnam, January 30 Memphis, Tennessee, February 1–April 4 Columbia University, April 23–30 Los Angeles, June 5 Chicago, August 28 Atlantic City, September 7 Mexico City, October 16 America, November 5 Notes Further Reading Chapter 9: Richard Nixon and the Resilience of American Democracy The Madman … and the Theory “I Am Not a Crook” Reform and Renewal Participatory Democracy Lives On Notes Further Reading Chapter 10: Confronting Limits, Turning Right Limits to Growth “A Government as Good as Its People” The “Crisis of Confidence” The “Pitiful, Helpless Giant” Reagan and the Rise of the New Right Notes Further Reading Chapter 11: The Reagan Revolution Reaganomics The “Reagan Boom” “How Much Is Enough?” Killer Trees and Toaster Pictures Individualism in the Reagan Era Cold War: The Sequel The “Moral Equivalent of Our Founding Fathers” “The Gay Plague” Notes Further Reading Chapter 12: The End of Nothing: History Lurches On “Kinder and Gentler” “The Era of Big Government Is Over”: The Neoliberalism of Bill Clinton Culture Wars Notes Further Reading Chapter 13: America Under Attack The Guy You’d Rather Have a Beer With 9/11 and the Invasion of Iraq “Too Big to Fail” “Become a Part of the Mob!” “Make America Great Again” “Very Fine People” 2020 “Man Dies after Medical Incident during Police Interaction” Notes Further Reading Index