Making Sense of American Liberalism

This collection of thoughtful and timely essays offers refreshing and intelligent new perspectives on postwar American liberalism. Sophisticated yet accessible, Making Sense of American Liberalism challenges popular myths about liberalism in the United States. The volume presents the Democratic Party and liberal reform efforts such as civil rights, feminism, labor, and environmentalism as a more united, more radical force than has been depicted in scholarship and the media emphasizing the decline and disunity of the left.

 

Distinguished contributors assess the problems liberals have confronted in the twentieth century, examine their strategies for reform, and chart the successes and potential for future liberal reform.

 

Contributors are Anthony J. Badger, Jonathan Bell, Lizabeth Cohen, Susan Hartmann, Ella Howard, Bruce Miroff, Nelson Lichtenstein, Doug Rossinow, Timothy Stanley, and Timothy Thurber.

Jonathan Bell is an associate professor of history at the University of Reading, England, and the author of The Liberal State on Trial: The Cold War and American Politics in the Truman Years. Timothy Stanley is a member of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, and the author of The Crusader: The Life and Tumultuous Times of Pat Buchanan.