In
progress--check frequently for updates
History 6393, Twentieth-Century U.S. History
Thursdays, 5:30-8:30
This is a readings course in U.S. History since 1900, covering some of
the main themes, both in domestic and foreign policies and social
developments, in the 20th century.
Structure of the course: Each
week, there will be a common reading for which everyone will be
responsible . In addition to
that, each week a certain number of
students will read and report individually on books that are relevant
to that week's topic.
Assignments and Grading: Each student
will be responsible for reading and writing a brief overview, about4
pages, of seven [7] different books during the semester.
These reviews will discuss the main arguments of the book, and then
give an impression of the book's strengths and weaknesses and what
might be expected of future works in the particular area. You
should send me an electronic version of your writing so I can attach it
to the syllabus on the web page and others can read it there.
Each of these reviews will count for
ten [10] points, for a total of seventy [70] Additionally, each
student will prepare an essay based on his/her readings at the end of
the semester, worth fifteen [15] points. And class discussion
will
count for fifteen [15] points as well.
I also have a yahoogroups listserve set up so I can get you
information, readings, etc. I'll give details in class about
subscribing.
Useful Resources
Cold
War International History Project
National Security Archive
Vincent
Ferraro's International Relations Site
Presidential
Libraries and Archives
The National Archives and Records
Administration
American
Labor History
AFL-CIO
Labor History Site
Marx
African-American
History
Women's
History
SDS
The New Deal
McCarthyism
COINTELPRO
Red Scare
1920s
Immigration History
Economic History
Economic History
Documents
Anti-War Music
The Authentic History Center
Secrecy News
I. Introduction
Choosing Readings
II. Empire and Reform
Common: Skim either William Appleman Williams, Tragedy of
American Diplomacy, or The Contours of American History; Open
Door Notes; Bob Buzzanco,
"What Happened to the New Left: Toward a Radical Reading of American
Foreign Relations," "Anti-Imperialism," at http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/antiimp.html;
Weeks
article; Williams
article; Paterson
article; Hunt
article; Perkins
on Tragedy
Walter LaFeber, The Cambridge History of American
Foreign Relations: The American Search for Opportunity, 1865-1913, vol.
2 Brandon
Thomas McCormick, China Market: America's Quest for Informal
Empire, 1893-1901 Ty
Jerry Israel, Progressivism and the Open Door: America and
China, 1905-1921
Michael Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door Brice
Richard Bensel, The Political Economy of American
Industrialization, 1877-1900 J.R.
James Green, Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest,
1895-1943
Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and
Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920
Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American
History Mike
Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in
America Steve
H.
Alan Tractenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in
the Gilded Age
Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 Hollis
Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States,
1877-1919 Brenda
Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to
FDR John
Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist
III. Capitalism,
War and the 1920s
Common: Woodrow
Wilson on "Dollar Diplomacy"; Woodrow Wilson
on Mexico; Eugene
Debs antiwar speech; Taft on Dollar
Diplomacy; Holger
Herwig, "Clio
Deceived: Conquest, Foreign and
Domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany," ; Braeman
article
*Martin Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism,
1890-1916 Paul
Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of
American History, 1900-1916 Brenda
Randolph Bourne, War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays,
1915-1919 Brice
Scott Nearing, Dollar Diplomacy: A Study in American Imperialism Brandon
Lloyd Gardner, Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to
Revolution, 1913-1923 Steve
*Arno Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and
Counterrevolution at Versailles J.R.
Colin Gordon, New Deals: Business, Labor and Politics in America,
1920-1935 Mike
IV. The Roosevelt
Era, Liberalism and New Deal
Common:
Thomas Ferguson, "From
Normalcy to New Deal" ;
Patrick Renshaw, "Was
There a Keynesian Economy in the United States between 1933-1945" ;
Bernstein, Barton J. "The New Deal: The Conservative Achievements of
Liberal Reform." In Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past:
Dissenting Essays in American History, pp. 263-88. (1968);
Gary Gerstle and Steven Fraser, The Rise and Fall of the New
Deal
Order, 1933-1980
Emily Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and
Culture of Dollar Diplomacy,
1900-1930
Emily Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and
Cultural Expansion,
1890-1945
William Leuchtenberg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, and
Paul Conkin, The New Deal
Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and
War Mike
Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American
Liberalism John
Anthony Badger, The New Deal: The Depression Years,
1933-1940 Joann
Ellis Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study in
Economic Ambivalence
V. Cold War
Articles by Leffler,
MccGwire,
Sherwin, Holloway, Reynolds, and Maier in Melvyn Leffler and David
Painter,
eds,
Origins
of the Cold War: An International History (available as
e-book, try this
link: and Leffler, "Inside
Enemy Archives . . ." ; Crapol
article
*Thomas McCormick, America’s Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy
in the
Cold War and After
*Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb John
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing The Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender
of Japan J.R.
Thomas Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and
Atomic
Energy, 1939-1956 Ty
*Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through
Twentieth-Century Europe
Arnold Offner, Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War,
1945-1953
Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman
Administration,
and the Cold War Brandon
Gabriel and Joyce Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United
States Foreign Policy,
1945-1954 Mike
*Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The
Transnational Movement to End
the Cold War Brice
Charles Meier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and its
Predecessors Brenda
VI. Domestic
Containment
Common: Ellen Schrecker, "The
Age of McCarthyism . . . "; Victor Navasky, Naming
Names; COINTELPRO
and the New Left; Escobar
article
Robert Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria,
1919-1920
*Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American
Democracy J.R.
Gerald Horne, The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson,
Dean of the Hollywood Ten John
Philip Jenkins, The Cold War at Home: The Red Scare in Pennsylvania,
1945-1960
Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the
Universities Brice
Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in
America
David Price, Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism
and the FBI's Surveillance of
Activist Anthropologists Joann
Don Carleton, Red Scare!: Right-Wing
Hysteria, Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas Ty
Ward Churchill and Jim Van Der Wall, Agents
of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party
and the American Indian Movement
James Kirkpatrick Davis, Assault on the Left: The FBI and
the Sixties Antiwar Movement Rick
Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman, Manufacturing
Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media Brandon
VII. The National
Security State/U.S. in the World
Common: William Hartung
and Michelle
Ciarrocca, "The
Military-Industrial Think Tank Complex . . ." ;
Gert Krell, "Capitalism
and Armaments" ; Benjamin Fordham,
"Domestic
Politics, International Pressure, and Policy Change: The Case of
NSC-68"; Michael T. Hayes, "The
Republican Road Not Taken: The Foreign-Policy Vision of Robert A. Taft";
articles by Zhang, Cumings, Hunt and Levine, Bethel
and Roxborough in Leffler and Painter, Origins of the Cold War
*Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman
and
the Origins of
the National Security State,
1945-1954 Ty
Frank Kofsky, Harry Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful
Campaign to Deceive the Nation
*Benjamin Fordham, Building the Cold War Consensus: The Political
Economy of U.S. National Security Policy, 1949-1951 Paul
Aaron Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State
Noam Chomsky, et al, The Cold War and the Universities: Toward an
Intellectual History of the
Postwar Years
Ann Markusen, Peter Hall, Sabina Dietrich,The Rise
of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of
Industrial America Mike
Ron Theodore Robin, The Making of the Cold
War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the
Military-Intellectual Complex Brice
John Tirman, Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms
Trade Rick
*Thomas O’Brien, The Revolutionary Mission: American Enterprise in
Latin
America, 1900-1945 Brandon
Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the
United States, 1944-1954
George and Audrey Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret
Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia
Thomas Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph
of the Cuban Revolution
Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World
*Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and
the
Making of Our Times J.R.
VIII. Vietnam and
the 1960s
Common: Bob Buzzanco, Vietnam
and the Transformation of American Life, [online, click here];
"The United
States and Vietnam, 1950-1968: Capitalism, Communism, and
Containment" in Hahn and Heiss, eds, Empire
and Revolution; "Fear
and (Self) Loathing in Lubbock, or How I Learned to Quit Worrying and
Love Vietnam and Iraq"; responses by Taylor,
and Miller ; Port
Huron Statement;
*Irving
Horowitz, C. Wright Mills: An American Utopian
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite Paul
Sidney Milkis and Jerome Mileur, eds, The
Great Society and the High
Tide of American Liberalism
Allen Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in
the 1960s
Judith Stein, Running Steel, Running America :
Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism Joann
Jeffrey Helsing, Johnson's War/Johnson's
Great Society: The Guns and Butter Trap J.R.
*Andrew Rotter, The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American Commitment
to Southeast Asia Brice
George McT. Kahin, Intervention: How America Became Involved in
Vietnam Mike
Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the
Vietnam Era John
*Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, The United States, and the
Modern Historical Experience
James Carter, “Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State-making in
Southeast Asia” [UH diss]
Christian Appy, Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and
Vietnam Rick
IX.
Countercultures (Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll)
Leslie Fishbein, Rebels in Bohemia: The Radicals of The Masses,
1911-1917
James Jones, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life Steve
H.
John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of
Sexuality in America
Lewis MacAdams, Birth Of The Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant
Garde J.R.
Jonah Raskin: American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of
the Beat Generation Hollis
Robert Cantwell, When We Were Good: The Folk Revival Joann
John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture
Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
Martin Lee, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA,
the Sixties and Beyond
Hollis
Martin Torgoff, Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned
Age, 1945-2000 Mike
Eric Schlosser, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and
Cheap Labor in the American Black Market Rick
David Allyn, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An
Unfettered
History
Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis, 1940-1996 Brenda
Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth
Century
X. Economics and
Consumerism
Common: Robert Collins, "The
Economic Crisis of 1968 and the Waning of the 'American Century'";
Charles
Kindleberger
on Bretton Woods
Lendol Calder, Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of
Consumer Credit
*Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass
Consumption
in Postwar America Brenda
Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America,
Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe Mike
Joseph Heath, and Andrew Potter, Nation of Rebels: Why
Counterculture
Became Consumer Culture Hollis
*Tom Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and
the Rise of Hip Consumerism
Tom Frank, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism,
and the End of
Economic Democracy John
Howard Karger, Shortchanged: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy Brandon
William Greider, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs
the Country Paul
Doug Henwood, Wall Street [here]
XI.
African-American/Civil Rights
Common:"A Round Table: Martin Luther
King,
Jr." (Thelen,
Garrow,
Carson,
Cone,
Huggins,
Harding)
Cheryl Greenberg, Or Does it Explode? Black Harlem in the Great
Depression
Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great
Depression Joann
James Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiment Hollis
Nikhil Pal Singh, Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle
for Democracy
*Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening
of the 1960s
*Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A
Radical Democratic Vision
Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin
Luther King, Jr. J.R.
David Garrow, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference
Michael Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The
Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality Ty
Peniel Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A
Narrative History of Black Power in America
Jeffrey Ogbar,
Black Power: Radical Politics and African American
Identity Steve H.
XII. Women,
Women’s Liberation, Feminism
David Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
Kate Weigand, Red Feminism: American
Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation
*Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the
Cold War Era Hollis
Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the
Nostalgia Trap Rick
Rickie Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race
Before Roe v. Wade
Daniel
Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of
the 'Feminine Mystique'
*Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s
Movement
Changed America
Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the
Civil Rights Movement and
New Left Brenda
Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America,
1967-1975 Joann
Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass
Media Steve H.
Estelle Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the
Future of Women Brenda
XIII. Right Turns
*Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American
Right Paul
*Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of
the American Consensus John
Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the
New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American
Politics Rick
Mary Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of
the GOP Brice
John Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom
and the Rise of
Conservative Politics Hollis
Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern
Republicans Ty
Kari Frederickson, The
Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968
Tom Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How
Conservatives Won the
Heart of America Steve H.
XIV.
Globalization, Terrorism, the Middle East
Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws:
America's Search for a New Foreign Policy
William Greider, One World Ready or Not:
The Manic Logic of Global
Capitalism
Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, and (with Linda
Bilmes), "The
Economic Costs of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years After the
Beginning of the Conflict", and "The
Broken Promise of Nafta" Paul
Andrew Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of
U.S. Diplomacy Steve H.
Chalmers Johnson,The Sorrows of Empire:
Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic Joann
Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the
Assault on Democracy
Michael Klare, Blood and
Oil : The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on
Imported Petroleum Brandon
Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American
Military Adventure in Iraq Steve H.
Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid, and The Iraq Study
Group Report:
The Way Forward--A New Approach , and
James Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States [all
three]
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in
the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone Rick
P.K. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the
Privatized Military Industry Ty
T. Christian Miller, Blood Money: Wasted
Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq J.R.
Final Papers
Brandon
Brenda
Brice
Hollis
J.R.
JoAnn
John
Mike
Rick
Steve
Ty