Author : Robert Higgs
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 22,20 MB
Release : 2006-06-22
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0195182928
Publisher description
Author : Robert Higgs
Publisher : Independent Studies in Politic
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 10,31 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781598130294
Offering a powerful interpretation of U.S. political economy from the early-1930s to the end of the Cold War, this resource refutes many popular myths about the Great Depression and New Deal, the World War II economy, and the postwar national-security state that is still so pervasive today. What accounts for the extraordinary duration of the Great Depression? How did the war alter relations between government and leaders of big business? What is Congress’s role in the military-industrial-congressional complex? This book answers these and other crucial questions by presenting new insights and analyses along with statistical evidence that defies mainstream interpretation of economic history.
Author : Joseph M. Siracusa
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 46,62 MB
Release : 2002-08-30
Category : History
ISBN : 031301230X
Organized around the office of the president, this study focuses on American behavior at home and abroad from the Great Depression to the onset of the end of the Cold War, two key points during which America sought a re-definition of its proper relationship to the world. Domestically, American society continued the process of industrialization and urbanization that had begun in the 19th century. Urban growth accompanied industrialism, and more and more Americans lived in cities. Because of industrial growth and the consequent interest in foreign markets, the United States became a major world power. American actions as a nation, whether as positive attempts to mold events abroad or as negative efforts to enjoy material abundance in relative political isolation, could not help but affect the course of world history. Under President Hoover, the federal government was still a comparatively small enterprise; challenges of the next six decades would transform it almost beyond belief, touching in one way or another almost every facet of American life. Before the New Deal, few Americans expected the government to do anything for them. By the end of the Second World War and in the aftermath of the Great Depression, however, Americans had turned to Washington for help. Even the popular Reagan presidency of the 1980s, the most conservative since Hoover, would fail to undo the basic New Deal commitment to assist struggling Americans. There would be no turning back the clock, at home or abroad.
Author : George Edward Stanley
Publisher : Gareth Stevens
Page : 52 pages
File Size : 21,51 MB
Release : 2004-12-30
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 9780836858297
In 1929, the United States was plunged into the Great Depression. This book tells the story of how Americans struggled to regain economic stability under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies. It also tells how World War II was fought in Europe and in the Pacific, and how in the age of atomic weapons, the strained relationship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union degenerated into the Cold War. Book jacket.
Author : Rodney P. Carlisle
Publisher : Infobase Publishing
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 29,40 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Depressions
ISBN : 1438126980
Changing International affairs and the forces of technological innovation shaped the lives of Americans in the last decades of the 20th century. While the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to hopes of peaceful international relations, the Gulf War and the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York shattered these aspirations. In the social sphere, cell phones, CDs, and the Internet completely transformed the ways by which people communicated and conveyed information. The election of an African-American man to the presidency marked the successful continuation of the struggle for equal civil rights, bolstering America's reputation as a radically changing place in this contemporary period.
Author : Benjamin Balthaser
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 42,70 MB
Release : 2021-03-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0472902555
Anti-Imperialist Modernism excavates how U.S. cross-border, multi-ethnic anti-imperialist movements at mid-century shaped what we understand as cultural modernism and the historical period of the Great Depression. The book demonstrates how U.S. multiethnic cultural movements, located in political parties, small journals, labor unions, and struggles for racial liberation, helped construct a common sense of international solidarity that critiqued ideas of nationalism and essentialized racial identity. The book thus moves beyond accounts that have tended to view the pre-war “Popular Front” through tropes of national belonging or an abandonment of the cosmopolitanism of previous decades. Impressive archival research brings to light the ways in which a transnational vision of modernism and modernity was fashioned through anti-colonial networks of North/South solidarity. Chapters examine farmworker photographers in California’s central valley, a Nez Perce intellectual traveling to the Soviet Union, imaginations of the Haitian Revolution, the memory of the U.S.–Mexico War, and U.S. radical writers traveling to Cuba. The last chapter examines how the Cold War foreclosed these movements within a nationalist framework, when activists and intellectuals had to suppress the transnational nature of their movements, often rewriting the cultural past to conform to a patriotic narrative of national belonging.
Author : William M. McClenahan Jr.
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 10,17 MB
Release : 2011-12-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1421403625
Throughout his two-term presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower faced the challenge of managing a period of peacetime prosperity after more than two decades of depression, war, and postwar inflation. The essential issue he addressed was how the country would pay for the deepening Cold War and the extent to which such unprecedented peacetime commitments would affect the United States economy and its institutions. William M. McClenahan, Jr., and William H. Becker explain how Eisenhower’s beliefs and his experiences as a military bureaucrat and wartime and postwar commander shaped his economic policies. They explore the macro- and microeconomic policies his administration employed to finance the Cold War while adapting Republican ideas and Eisenhower's economic principles to new domestic and foreign policy environments. They also detail how Eisenhower worked with new instruments of government policy making, such as the Council of Economic Advisers and a strengthened Federal Reserve Board. In assessing his administration's policies, the authors demonstrate that, rather than focusing overwhelmingly on international political affairs at the expense of economic issues, Eisenhower’s policies aimed to preserve and enhance the performance of the American free market system, which he believed was inextricably linked to the successful prosecution of the Cold War. While some of the decisions Eisenhower made did not follow conservative doctrine as closely as many in the Republican Party wanted, this book asserts that his approach to and distrust of partisan politics led to success on many fronts and indeed maintained and buttressed the nation's domestic and international economic health. An important and original contribution, this examination of the Eisenhower administration's economic policy enriches our understanding of the history of the modern American economy, the presidency, and conservatism in the United States.
Author : Eric Rauchway
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 161 pages
File Size : 18,95 MB
Release : 2008-03-10
Category : History
ISBN : 0199716919
The New Deal shaped our nation's politics for decades, and was seen by many as tantamount to the "American Way" itself. Now, in this superb compact history, Eric Rauchway offers an informed account of the New Deal and the Great Depression, illuminating its successes and failures. Rauchway first describes how the roots of the Great Depression lay in America's post-war economic policies--described as "laissez-faire with a vengeance"--which in effect isolated our nation from the world economy just when the world needed the United States most. He shows how the magnitude of the resulting economic upheaval, and the ineffectiveness of the old ways of dealing with financial hardships, set the stage for Roosevelt's vigorous (and sometimes unconstitutional) Depression-fighting policies. Indeed, Rauchway stresses that the New Deal only makes sense as a response to this global economic disaster. The book examines a key sampling of New Deal programs, ranging from the National Recovery Agency and the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the Public Works Administration and Social Security, revealing why some worked and others did not. In the end, Rauchway concludes, it was the coming of World War II that finally generated the political will to spend the massive amounts of public money needed to put Americans back to work. And only the Cold War saw the full implementation of New Deal policies abroad--including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Today we can look back at the New Deal and, for the first time, see its full complexity. Rauchway captures this complexity in a remarkably short space, making this book an ideal introduction to one of the great policy revolutions in history. About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, and Literary Theory to History. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given topic. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how it has developed and influenced society. Whatever the area of study, whatever the topic that fascinates the reader, the series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.
Author : Lisle A. Rose
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
Page : 414 pages
File Size : 42,18 MB
Release : 1999-02-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0700621881
In 1950, Main Street America-restored by victories in a global war and hopeful for a prosperous and peaceful future-was abruptly traumatized. The sudden prospect of thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union, Senator Joseph McCarthy's vicious anticommmunist crusade, and the beginning of the Korean War all combined to dampen the public mood. In the wake of these events, the Cold War invaded every home and convinced millions of Americans that the liberal establishment created by Franklin Roosevelt and sustained by Harry Truman had betrayed the public trust and placed the nation in mortal peril. Revealing the intense interplay between foreign policy, domestic politics, and public opinion, Lisle Rose argues that 1950 was a pivotal year for the nation. Thermonuclear terror brought "a clutching fear of mass death" to the forefront of public awareness, even as McCarthy's zealous campaign to root out "subversives" destroyed a sense of national community forged in the Great Depression and World War II. The Korean War, with its dramatic oscillations between victory and defeat, put the finishing touches on the national mood of crisis and hysteria. Drawing upon recently available Russian and Chinese sources, Rose sheds much new light on the aggressive designs of Stalin, Mao, and North Korea's Kim Il Sung in East Asia and places the American reaction to the North Korean invasion in a new and more realistic context. Rose argues that the convergence of Korea, McCarthy, and the Bomb wounded the nation in ways from which we've never fully recovered. He suggests, in fact, that the convergence may have paved the way for our involvement in Vietnam and, by eroding public trust in and support for government, launched the ultra-Right's campaign to dismantle the foundations of modern American liberalism. Engagingly written, The Cold War Comes to Main Street is a sophisticated synthesis that cuts to the core of a half-century of postwar national paranoia. It calls into question the assumptions of several generations of scholars about foreign affairs and domestic policies and will force readers to reconsider their assumptions about just when-and how-the nation lost its sense of community, confidence, and civility.
Author : Rebecca S. Lowen
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 26,43 MB
Release : 1997-07-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520917903
The "cold war university" is the academic component of the military-industrial-academic complex, and its archetype, according to Rebecca Lowen, is Stanford University. Her book challenges the conventional wisdom that the post-World War II "multiversity" was created by military patrons on the one hand and academic scientists on the other and points instead to the crucial role played by university administrators in making their universities dependent upon military, foundation, and industrial patronage. Contesting the view that the "federal grant university" originated with the outpouring of federal support for science after the war, Lowen shows how the Depression had put financial pressure on universities and pushed administrators to seek new modes of funding. She also details the ways that Stanford administrators transformed their institution to attract patronage. With the end of the cold war and the tightening of federal budgets, universities again face pressures not unlike those of the 1930s. Lowen's analysis of how the university became dependent on the State is essential reading for anyone concerned about the future of higher education in the post-cold war era.
