Perspectives on Modern America: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century - Softcover

"Comprehensive and engaging, these essays offer a challenging overview of the major themes and contradictions of 20th-century American history. A valuable collection."―William Chafe, Duke University

"This is a rare and wonderful anthology. Fifteen scholars at the top of their craft do more than provide, in vigorous prose, a splendid introduction to America's last century. Broad and empathetic, their essays also help us confront the hopes and tragedies of the new one."―Michael Kazin, Georgetown University

In Perspectives on Modern America: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century, Harvard Sitkoff brings together some of America's most distinguished scholars to survey and analyze the twentieth century. The impressive list of contributors includes Paul Boyer, Lizabeth Cohen, Sara M. Evans, Jacqueline Jones, William E. Leuchtenburg, and Charles Payne. Each contributor has written a broadly interpretive essay on a key aspect of American life and how it has changed over the past one hundred years, offering vivid end-of-the-century snapshots of our past troubles and triumphs-of the people, ideas, events, and developments that mattered most. The essays address a wide range of political, social, and economic issues including the history of liberalism and conservatism; the labor movement and the distribution of wealth; immigration and ethnicity; the status of women and African Americans; changes in the South and the West; consumer culture; the federal government; foreign policy; religion; and American cultural and intellectual life. The book includes astute portraits of such historical turning points as the Progressive era, the Great Depression and Second World War, American society in the 1960s, and the Reagan revolution. It also includes thoughtful essays on the growth and decline of organized labor, the limits of the American welfare state, the persistent systems of inequality, and the means employed to resist oppression. Offering a challenging and enlightening assessment of the past one hundred years, Perspectives on Modern America: Making Sense of theTwentieth Century is an essential text for undergraduates in twentieth-century American history and will also appeal to general readers.