Major Problems in American History since 1945 : Documents and Essays / Edition 2

by Robert Griffith, Paula (Eds.) Baker, Paula Baker

Overview

This text presents a carefully selected group of readings—on topics such as the Cold War and Watergate—organized to allow students to evaluate primary sources, test the interpretations of distinguished historians, and draw their own conclusions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780395868508
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Company College Division
Publication date:	01/28/2001
Series:	Major Problems in American History Series
Edition description:	2ND
Pages:	572
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Robert Griffith, Professor of History at American University, received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A specialist of the history of the United States since 1945, he is the author of The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (1970).

Paula Baker is an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her PhD from Rutgers University. Dr. Baker is the author of The Moral Frameworks of Public Life (1991) and numerous essays on political history, women's history, and the social sciences.

Thomas Paterson is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Connecticut and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1968. In addition to being the General Editor of Houghton Mifflin's Major Problems series, he is co-author of Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, 5/e, (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) and A People and A Nation, 6/e (Houghton Mifflin, 2001). In addition to authoring several books and editing collections of essays on the history of U.S. Foreign Relations, he served as senior editor of the four-volume Encyclopedia of American Foreign Relations (1997). He is part president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

Table of Contents

Contents

• 1. World War II and the Origins of Postwar America
  ESSAYS
  Thomas G. Paterson, The Origins of the Postwar International System
  Alan Wolfe, The Roots of Postwar Politics
  Alan Brinkley, The Legacies of World War II

  2. From World War II to the Cold War: The Atomic Bombing of Japan

  DOCUMENTS

  1. President Harry S Truman's Advisors Discuss the Atomic Bomb, May 1945

  2. Atomic Scientists Urge an Alternative Course, June 1945

  3. U.S. Science Advisers Endorse Dropping the Bomb, June 1945

  4. Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph Bard Urges Alternatives, June 1945

  5. General Leslie Groves Reports on a Successful Test, July 1945

  6. President Truman Discusses the Bomb at Potsdam, July 1945

  7. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Concludes That the Bomb Was Unnecessary, 1946

  ESSAYS

  Robert James Maddox, The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Atomic Bomb

  Gar Alperovitz, Hiroshima: Historians Reassess

  3. The Cold War Begins

  DOCUMENTS

  1. President Harry S Truman and His Advisers Debate U.S. Policy Toward the U.S.S.R., April 1945

  2. Russian Premier Joseph Stalin Defends Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe, April 1945

  3. Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace Urges a Conciliatory Approach, July 1946

  4. White House Aide Clark M. Clifford Summarizes the Case for the Hard Line, September 1946

  5. Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Novikov Reports on the U.S. Drive for World Supremacy, September 1946

  6. The Truman Doctrine, March 1947

  7. Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson Calls for Economic Aid to Europe, May 1947

  8. The President's Advisers Urge Military Expansion,April 1950

  9. President Truman and His Advisers Determine the United States' Response to the Invasion of South Korea, June 26, 1950

  ESSAYS

  John Lewis Gaddis, Soviet Unilateralism and the Origins of the Cold War

  Thomas G. Paterson, An Exaggerated Threat and the Rise of American Globalism

  4. Affluence and Discontent in the 1950s

  DOCUMENTS

  1. Life Magazine Identifies the New Teen-age Market, 1959

  2. Newsweek Decries the Problem of Dangerous Teens, 1955

  3. U.S. News and World Report Assesses the Peril of Mass Culture and the Evils of Television, 1955

  4. Congress Investigates Homosexuals as Subversives, 1950

  5. Graphic Illustrations of How to Respond to a Nuclear Attack, 1950

  ESSAYS

  Beth Bailey, Rebels Without a Cause: Teenagers in the 1950s

  Roland Marchand, Visions of Classlessness

  5. John F. Kennedy, the Cuban Revolution, and the Cold War

  DOCUMENTS

  1. Fidel Castro Denounces U.S. Policy Toward Cuba, 1960

  2. President John F. Kennedy Calls for an Alliance for Progress, 1961

  3. A Board of Inquiry Reports on the Bay of Pigs, 1961

  4. President Kennedy and His Advisers Debate Options in the Missile Crisis, October 16, 1962

  5. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev Appeals to President Kennedy, October 26, 1962

  6. Anastas I. Mikhoyan and Fidel Castro Review the Crisis, November 3–4, 1962

  ESSAYS

  Thomas G. Paterson, Spinning Out of Control: Kennedy's War Against Cuba and the Missile Crisis

  Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, Aftermath

  6. Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and American Liberalism

  DOCUMENTS

  1. Michael Harrington Describes the "Other America," 1962

  2. President Lyndon B. Johnson Declares War on Poverty, 1964

  3. President Ronald Reagan Warns of the Dangers of the Welfare State, 1964

  4. A Liberal Cartoonist Worries That Johnson Has Abandoned the Great Society, 1965

  5. Two White House Aides Report the Achievements of the Great Society, 1966

  6. Poverty in America, 1959–1997: A Graphic

  ESSAYS

  Ira Katznelson, Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?

  Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement

  7 . Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for African American Equality

  DOCUMENTS

  1. The New York Times Reports a Murder in Georgia, 1946

  2. Malcolm X Recalls Getting a "Conk," 1964

  3. Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

  4. Franklin McCain Remembers the First Sit-In, 1960

  5. Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream," 1963

  6. Stokley Carmichael Explains "Black Power," 1967

  7. A Senate Committee Reports on the FBI's Campaign Against Martin Luther King, Jr., 1976

  ESSAYS

  Vincent Gordon Harding, King as Disturber of the Peace

  Thomas J. Sugrue, American's Continuing Racial Crisis

  8. Vietnam and the Crisis of American Empire

  DOCUMENTS

  1. The Vietnamese Declare Their Independence, 1945

  2. State Department Advisers Debate U.S. Support for the French in Vietnam, 1949

  3. President Dwight D. Eisenhower Explains the Domino Theory, 1954

  4. Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference on Indochina, 1954

  5. Nguyen Tan Thanh, a South Vietnamese Peasant, Explains Why He Joined the Vietcong (1961), 1986

  6. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, 1964

  7. President Lyndon Johnson's Advisers Debate Expanding the War, 1965

  8. Lieutenant Marion Lee Kempner, a Young Marine, Explains the War, 1966

  9. Wrong, Rambo! A Vietnam Veteran Looks Back, 1985

  ESSAYS

  George McT. Kahin, The Cold War and American Intervention in Vietnam

  George C. Herring, The Meaning of Vietnam

  9. The New Left and the Politics of the 1960s

  DOCUMENTS

  1. The Port Huron Statement, 1963

  2. The Sharon Statement, 1960

  3. The Weatherman's Call for Revolution: "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows," 1969

  4. Raymond Mungo Searches for a New Age at Total Loss Farm, 1970

  5. Two Disillusioned Ex-Radicals Bid Good-bye to the Sixties, 1985

  6. Tom Hayden Recalls a Time of Greatness and Wonder, 1988

  ESSAYS

  Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, The Contradictory Legacy of the Sixties

  Rick Perlstein, Who Owns the Sixties

  10. From the Feminine Mystique to the New Feminism

  DOCUMENTS

  1. Betty Friedan on the Problem That Has No Name, 1963

  2. NOW Statement of Purpose, 1966

  3. Feminists Analyze the Welfare System, 1970

  4. Redstockings Manifesto, 1970

  5. A Redbook Magazine Reader Discovers Consciousness-Raising

  6. Phyllis Schlafly Proclaims the Power of the Positive Woman, 1977

  ESSAYS

  Martha F. Davies, Welfare Rights and Women's Rights in the 1960s

  Alice Echols, Women's Liberation and Sixties Radicalism

  11. Richard M. Nixon, Watergate, and the Crisis of the "Imperial" Presidency

  DOCUMENTS

  1. Richard M. Nixon on Being President, 1972

  2. White House Counsel John W. Dean II Presents the "Enemies List," 1971

  3. President Nixon Discusses the Watergate Break-in with Aide H.R. Haldeman, 1972

  4. Senator Sam J. Ervin on Watergate, 1974

  5. President Nixon's Farewell, 1974

  ESSAYS

  James A. Nuechterlein, Escaping Watergate: A Revisionist View of the Nixon Presidency

  Stanley I. Kutler, The Inescapability of Watergate

  12. The Reagan Revolution and After: Politics and Political Economy in the New Era

  DOCUMENTS

  1. President Jimmy Carter and the Crisis of the American Spirit, 1979

  2. Presidential Candidate Ronald Reagan Calls for New Economic Policies, 1980

  3. President George Bush Seeks a Kinder, Gentler Nation, 1989

  4. The Republican "Contract with America," 1994

  5. President Bill Clinton Signs a Bill "To End Welfare as We Know It," 1996

  6. A Liberal Postmortem on the 1996 Election, 1997

  ESSAYS

  Thomas Byrne Edsall, The Mobilization of American Business

  Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, Democrats and Republicans Forge a New Political Economy

  13. The Empire Strikes Back: Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War

  DOCUMENTS

  1. President Ronald Reagan Denounces the Soviet Union as an "Evil" Empire, 1982

  2. U.S. Military Spending, 1980-1990: A Graphic

  3. A Congressional Committee Reports on "Irangate," 1987

  4. Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev Charts a New Direction for the U.S.S.R., 1988

  5. The New York Times Announces the End of the Cold War, 1989

  6. President George Bush Proclaims a New World Order, 1990

  ESSAYS

  John Lewis Gaddis, Ronald Reagan's Cold War Victory

  Richard Ned Lebow and Janet Gross Stein, Reagan and the Russians

  William M. LeoGrande, Reagan and Central America

  14. Brave New World: The United States and the Global Era

  ESSAYS

  Robert D. Atkinson and Randolph H. Court, The "New Economy" of the 1990s

  Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld

  Ronald Takaki, America as a New World "Borderland"

  Michael Schudson, A Gathering of Citizens