Major Problems in American History Since 1945

Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems in American History series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. This reader serves as the primary anthology for the Post-1945 U.S. History course, Comprehensive topical coverage includes the Cold War; the cultural and political movements of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s; Vietnam; the return of conservatism; globalization; life in the new information age; the post-Cold War era; and race and ethnicity. The Fourth Edition extends its consideration of the period since the 1960s by adding two entirely new chapters and substantially reconfiguring others. In this way, this edition devotes far more attention to the 1970s, a period that has received especially notable scholarly scrutiny in the last few years, and to the period since the end of the Cold War. Key pedagogical elements of the Major Problems format have been retained: chapter introductions, headnotes, and suggested readings.

Natasha Zaretsky is an Associate Professor of History at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University. Her book, No Direction Home: the American Family and the Fear of National Decline, 1968-1980 (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), explores the place of the family in debates about American national decline, 1968-1980. Her articles and essays have appeared in The World the Sixties Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America (Temple University Press, 2003), Race, Nation, and Empire in American History (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), Diplomatic History, and The New Republic. She is currently writing a cultural history of the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. Zaretsky teaches courses in modern American history, research and writing, gender and family, and an introductory course in American Studies. In 2009, the History News Network named her a top young historian.

Mark Atwood Lawrence is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his B.A. from Stanford University in 1988 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1999. His first book, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005), explores the early years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He is also author of The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (Oxford University Press, 2008) and co-editor of The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Harvard University Press, 2007). His articles have appeared in Diplomatic History and The India Review. He is now working on a study of U.S. policymaking toward the developing world during the 1960s and early 1970s. Lawrence teaches courses in U.S. foreign relations history, the Vietnam Wars, and the Cold War. In 2005, he was awarded the President's Associates' Award for Teaching Excellence by UT-Austin.

Robert Griffith, Professor of History at American University, received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A specialist of the history of the United States since 1945, he is the author of The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (1970).

Paula Baker is an associate professor of history at Ohio State University. She received her PhD from Rutgers University. Dr. Baker is the author of The Moral Frameworks of Public Life (1991) and numerous essays on political history, women's history, and the social sciences.