"The country and the world doesn't deserve to be left this way," was David E. Lilienthal's reaction to the news of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the prospect of the leadership of liberalism in America passing into the hands of the unknown Harry S. Truman. This book takes a fresh look at the tense and difficult relationship between Truman and the liberal intellectuals. Alonzo L. Hamby discusses changing styes and viewpoints in progressivism and examines the manifestations of that political philosophy as they appeared during the postwar years. He depicts the rise of non-Communist liberalism after the war as both a moral and a practical necessity. The concept of a Popular Front with Communism, predominant during the war years, was salutary so long as the major threat to liberal values was fascist militarism, but as a matter of both moral integrity and political necessity, the postwar era required a definition of progressivism which rejected all varieties of totalitarianism. Professor Hamby argues that the new persuasion, the Vial Center, was in the main a healthy reaffirmation of the progressive tradition. Harry S. Truman never won full acceptance from a liberal movement unable to overcome entirely its need for the type of charismatic leadership given it by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Nevertheless, he successfully defended the New Deal, making it a part of the American political consensus; he and his administration successfully adjusted the depression-born New Deal tradition to post-war affluence; and he recognized the black minority's drive for civil rights as one of the urgencies of American life. Operating in a hostile political climate, Truman scored only modest successes, but his leadership of the liberal movement was more consistent and effective than many liberals of the time or historians since have acknowledged.

What does Walter Mondale's career reveal about the dilemma of the modern Democtratic party and the crisis of postwar American liberalism? Steven M. Gillon 's answer is that Mondale's frustration as Jimmy Carter's vice president and his failure to unseat the immensely popular President Reagan in 1984 reveal the beleaguered state of a party torn apart by generational and ideological disputes. The Democrats' Dilemma begins with Mondale's early career in Minnesota politics, from his involvement with Hubert Humphrey to his election to the United States Senate in 1964. Like many liberals of his generation, Mondale traveled to Washington hopeful that government power could correct social wrongs. By 1968, urban unrest, a potent white backlash, and America's involvement in the Vietnam war dimmed much of his optimisim. In the years after 1972, as senator, as vice president, and as presidential candidate, Mondale self-conciously attempted to fill the void after the death of Robert Kennedy. Mondale attempted to create a new Democratic party by finding common ground between the party's competeing factions. Gillon contends that Mondale's failure to create that consensus underscored the deep divisions within the Democratic Party. Using previously classified documents, unpublished private papers, and dozens of interviews -including extensive conversations with Mondale himself- Gillon paints a vivid portrait of the innerworkings of the Carter administration. The Democrats' Dilemma captures Mondale's frustration as he attempted to mediate between the demands of liberals intent upon increased spending for social programs and the fiscal conservatism of a president unskilled in the art of congressional diplomacy. Gillon discloses the secret revelation that Mondale nearly resigned as vice president. Gillon also chronicles Mondale's sometimes stormy relationships with Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, and Geraldine Ferraro. Eminently readable and a means of access to a major twentieth-century political figure, The Democrats' Dilemma is a fascinating look at the travail of American liberalism.

America's dark history of anti-Semitism, racism, and ethnic bigotry―and many of the efforts to combat such prejudice―has received growing attention in recent years. Yet one of the most important stories in America's struggle to overcome ethnic and religious hatred has gone largely untold. From the Depression to the late 1960s Jewish organizations―working as the leaders in a broadly based social and political movement―waged a determined campaign to eliminate all forms of discrimination and prejudice from American society. Stuart Svonkin delves into the archival records of America's three major Jewish defense groups―the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and the American Jewish Congress―to offer the first comprehensive account of organized Jewish political activism against bigotry and for human rights. Jews Against Prejudice chronicles American Jewry's political ascendance, from the era before World War II, when Jewish defense groups first organized to fight mass anti-Semitism, to their emergence as the leaders of a liberal movement determined to address the nation's most pressing political and social problems. Svonkin explores the impact that these Jewish groups had in the fight against racial and ethnic stereotypes. Beginning in World War II Jewish social scientists and other intellectuals began a concentrated effort to investigate the social and psychological bases of prejudicial attitudes, outlooks, and behavior. By the end of the war these social scientists became convinced that all forms of prejudice, including anti-Semitism, shared the same social and psychological causes, which, if discovered, could be successfully treated and eliminated. For over twenty years Jewish intellectuals and activists worked hand in hand to formulate practical programs to combat prejudice. They pioneered tactics―including educational programs in the schools, appeals for tolerance broadcast through the mass media, and legal challenges in the courts―that remain among the principal weapons of today's civil rights activists. Svonkin shows how ideology and the shifting models of prejudice greatly influenced the means that each Jewish group used in its fight against bigotry and racism. He considers the far-reaching effects of anticommunism in the 1950s and early 1960s, when Jewish political groups moved to support liberal anticommunism as well as to oppose the demagoguery of such figures as Senator Joseph McCarthy and the leaders of the John Birch Society. Exploring the tensions between American and Jewish identities, Svonkin argues that the revelations of the Eichmann Trial, the growing concern over Israel's security, and the persistence of anti-Semitism all shaped Jewish activism― driving the shift from the universalistic liberalism of the 1940s and 1950s to the cultural assertion and political neoconservatism of the late 1960s.

Today few political analysts use the term "propaganda." However, in the wake of World War I, fear of propaganda haunted the liberal conscience. Citizens and critics blamed the war on campaigns of mass manipulation engaged in by all belligerents. Beginning with these "propaganda anxieties," Brett Gary traces the history of American fears of and attempts to combat propaganda through World War II and up to the Cold War. The Nervous Liberals explores how following World War I the social sciences—especially political science and the new field of mass communications—identified propaganda as the object of urgent "scientific" study. From there his narrative moves to the eve of WWII as mainstream journalists, clerics, and activists demanded greater government action against fascist propaganda, in response to which Congress and the Justice Department sought to create a prophylaxis against foreign or antidemocratic communications. Finally, Gary explores how free speech liberalism was further challenged by the national security culture, whose mobilization before World War II to fight the propaganda threat lead to much of the Cold War anxiety about propaganda. Gary's account sheds considerable light not only on the history of propaganda, but also on the central dilemmas of liberalism in the first half of the century—the delicate balance between protecting national security and protecting civil liberties, including freedom of speech; the tension between public-centered versus expert-centered theories of democracy; and the conflict between social reform and public opinion control as the legitimate aim of social knowledge.

Timothy N. Thurber explores the links between Senator Hubert Humphrey's policies on racial justice and economic reform. Thurber investigates Humphrey's legislative agenda in the context of the tensions between the class-based politics of the New Deal to which Humphrey wished the party to return and the rights-based politics that eventually came to dominate the Democratic platform. Although Humphrey is often associated with the civil rights movement, Thurber shows that he stood out in his commitment to achieving racial equality through means of economic reform, an approach that was not readily embraced by the Democratic Party.Thurber begins by tracing Humphrey's early life, and goes on to detail the rise of his political career, his lifelong commitment to the New Deal goal of economic equality, and his legislative agenda as a senator. From the Fair Employment Practices law, to the triumphant passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to more radical recommendations—such as a Domestic Marshall Plan—Humphrey became concerned with how structural changes in the economy effected African Americans.Thurber uses Humphrey's career not only to explore the intersection of race, class, and politics in the second half of this century but also to reveal the trajectory of Democratic politics in the postwar era as the party faced the increasingly difficult task of maintaining the New Deal coalition. Hubert Humphrey's agenda of racial justice through economic reform-its triumphs and its failures-represents for Thurber the precarious position of liberalism and a road still not taken.

American Intervention in Greece, 1943-1949: A Study in Counterrevolution (Columbia Contemporary American History Series)

The Business Response to Keynes, 1929-1964 (Columbia Contemporary American History Series)

This study of American policies towards the European Jews surviving the holocaust analyzes displaced persons legislation enacted after the war and examines the role of American Jews in countering anti-Semitism

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This comprehensive overview offers a radical critique of various positions within political philosophy on immigration. Cole argues that there is a serious gap between the legal and social practices of immigration and naturalization in liberal democratic states and the theoretical justification for such practices within the tradition of liberal political philosophy. The book examines various responses to this contradiction, and finds none of them satisfactory, arguing that this has serious implications both for liberal practice and theory.

This brilliant and eloquent book by a distinguished scholar and critic examines the history, the limits, and the promise of the human mind and the knowledge of which it is capable. Professor Highet explores the meaning of our culture from the intellectual and moral monuments of the Greeks, Romans, and Judeo-Christians, and our contemporary thinkers. Out of this book comes a clear definition of knowledge and insights into the strength and limitations of the mind.

Examines the process by which Southern blacks gained the right to vote, concentrating on the roles played by major civil-rights organizations from World War II to the Johnson administration

in Pursuit of Power (Cloth) (Contemporary American history series) \[Mar 13, 1985\] LAWSON, SF …

The Progressives―those reformers responsible for the shape of many American institutions, from the Federal Reserve Board to the New School for Social Research―have always presented a mystery. What prompted middle-class citizens to support fundamental change in American life? Eric Rauchway shows that like most of us, the reformers took their inspiration from their own lives―from the challenges of forming a family. Following the lives and careers of Charles and Mary Beard, Wesley Clair and Lucy Sprague Mitchell, and Willard and Dorothy Straight, the book moves from the plains of the Midwest to the plains of Manchuria, from the trade-union halls of industrial Britain to the editorial offices of the New Republic in Manhattan. Rauchway argues that parenting was a kind of elitism that fulfilled itself when it undid itself, and this vision of familial responsibility underlay Progressive approaches to foreign policy, economics, social policy, and education.

What was left, in both senses of the word, of liberalism after the death of Franklin Roosevelt? This question has aroused considerable historical debate because it raises the question of why the United States, during the Truman years, developed a much less state-centered orthodoxy than other comparable, powerful liberal states. What were the consequences of this fundamental choice that would shape the character and direction of American society during the second half of the twentieth century? This book explores the role of the Cold War in shifting the center of gravity in American politics sharply to the right in the years immediately following World War II. Jonathan Bell demonstrates that there was far more active and vibrant debate about the potential for liberal ideas before they become submerged in Cold War anti-state rhetoric than has generally been recognized. Using case studies from Senate and House races from 1946 to 1952, Bell shows how the anti-statist imagery that defined the Cold War in political debate became the key weapon among right-wing and business interest groups and their political representatives with which to discredit political figures who wanted to expand political liberalism beyond existing New Deal measures. He depicts how this process implicitly endorsed socioeconomic inequality.

This award-winning book provides a unique window on how America began to intervene in world affairs. In exploring what might be called the prehistory of Dollar Diplomacy, Cyrus Veeser brings together developments in New York, Washington, Santo Domingo, Brussels, and London. Theodore Roosevelt plays a leading role in the story as do State Department officials, Caribbean rulers, Democratic party leaders, bankers, economists, international lawyers, sugar planters, and European bondholders, among others. The book recounts a little-known incident: the takeover by the Santo Domingo Improvement Company (SDIC) of the foreign debt, national railroad, and national bank of the Dominican Republic. The inevitable conflict between private interest and public policy led President Roosevelt to launch a sweeping new policy that became known as the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The corollary gave the U. S. the right to intervene anywhere in Latin American that "wrongdoing or impotence" (in T. R.'s words) threatened "civilized society." The "wrongdoer" in this case was the SDIC. Imposing government control over corporations was launched and became a hallmark of domestic policy. By proposing an economic remedy to a political problem, the book anticipates policies embodied in the Marshall Plan, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.