From FDR to Reagan: The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order
The major question for this era is explaining the rise and fall of liberalism, and the rise of conservatism from 1932-1994. The following are critical questions necessary to answer this question:
- What was the context for the New Deal, and what ways did it redefine the scope of government? Do you agree with Roosevelt's remaking of the nation?
- What forces drove the U.S. toward extensive global economic and military engagement during the Cold War, and to what degree were these actions effective and/or morally sound?
- Why did the Civil Rights movement take off when it did? What led to its successes and failures? How did it spawn a multitude of activist movements in the nation?
- How do we understand the great cultural upheaval of the 1960s, and the subsequent conservative reaction?
- What accounts for the structural changes in the U.S. economy from in the pre- and post-1973 eras, and how has this impacted the political landscape?
Primary Documents from Betty Friedan, Phyllis Schlafly, SNCC, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and others.
Selected Secondary Texts:
Blum, John P. V was for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.
Kazin, Michael P. The Populist Persuasion: An American History. NY: Basic Books, 1995.
Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Patterson, James. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Ranelagh, John The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA. New York: Touchstone Books, 1986.
Schulman, Bruce J. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: De Capo Press, 2002.
Sugrue, Thomas. The Origins of Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.