Quest for Identity: America since 1945 / Edition 1

by Randall Bennett Woods

Overview

Randall Woods addresses the major themes characterizing the American experience from the close of World War II. Woods' accessible analysis of the Cold War and Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements, as well as other great changes that led to major realignments of American life, clarify postwar American history. Although this book emphasizes political history, it also covers cultural matters and socio-economic problems such as the growth of dramatic new patterns of immigration and migration, the development of the "counterculture", television and the internet, the interstate highway system, rock and roll, and the exploration of space.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521549974
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/07/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	608
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.22(d)

About the Author

Randall Bennett Woods is John A. Cooper Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas. He has written widely on twentieth-century American history, including Dawning of the Cold War (1991), Changing of the Guard (1990), and Fulbright: A Biography (1995), which won both the Ferrell and Ledbetter Prizes. He was also editor of Vietnam and the American Political Tradition: The Politics of Dissent (Cambridge, 2003).

Table of Contents

1. The republic in transition: demobilization and reconversion; 2. The origins of the Cold War; 3. Staying the course: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the politics of moderation; 4. Containing communism and managing the military-industrial complex: the Eisenhower Administration and the Cold War; 5. Capitalism and conformity: American society, 1945–60; 6. Liberalism reborn: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and the politics of activism; 7. The wages of globalism: foreign affairs during the Kennedy-Johnson era; 8. The dividing of America: Vietnam, Black Power, the counterculture, and the election of 1968; 9. Realpolitik or Imperialism? Nixon, Kissinger, and American foreign policy; 10. The limits of expediency: Richard M. Nixon and the American Presidency; 11. From confidence to anxiety: American Society, 1960–80; 12. Governing in a malaise: the presidencies of Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter; 13. The culture of narcissism: the Reagan era; 14. In search of balance: America into the twenty-first century.

Editorial Reviews

'… Woods provides a good read, a comprehensive overview and a useful resource without losing his political and cultural acuity.' International Affairs

From the Publisher