History 80000 Literature of American History, II KC Johnson http://kc-johnson.com Wednesdays at 6.30pm

This course completes the first-year literature survey, incorporating books from Reconstruction through the 20th century.

Books: All available for purchase through the course website.  Alan Brinkley, End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War  Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation  Donald Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History  Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution  Colin Gordon, Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in 20th Century America  Patrick Hagopian, The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing  Michael Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality  Fredrick Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam  David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst  Charles Postel, The Populist Vision  Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age  Judith Stein, Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism  Thomas Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit

Requirements:  Historiographical Paper, 18-20pp. Topics due by February 23. (40%)  Participation (30%)  Supplementary Reading/ Study Questions. Each student will put together and post to the course website a set of study questions for one of the assigned readings, plus a 2-3pp. bullet-point outline for three of the supplementary readings. (30%)

My Contact Information:  email: [email protected]  cell: 207-329-8456  Office Hours, Wed., 4.00-6.00pm, 5102 Schedule: Week 1: Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, paperback edition (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2002)

Week 2: David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (Mariner Books, 2001) Supplementary readings:  Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America (Harvard University Press, 1977)  Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (Cambridge University Press, 2001)  Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Week 3: Charles Postel, The Populist Vision (Oxford University Press, 2007) Supplementary readings:  Robert C. McMath, Jr., American Populism: A Social History, 1877–1898 (Hill and Wang, 1996)  Joe Creech, Righteous Indignation: Religion and the Populist Revolution (University of Illinois Press, 2006)  Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Oxford University Press, 1986)

Week 4: Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Harvard University Press, 2007) supplementary readings:  Melissa R. Klapper, Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in America, 1880- 1925 (Ivan R. Dee, 2007)  Michael McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (Oxford University Press, 1986)  Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (Hill and Wang, 1966)

Week 5: Alan Brinkley, End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (Vintage, 1996) supplementary readings:  Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge University Press, 1991)  Colin Gordon, New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935 (Cambridge University Press, 1994)  Jason Scott Smith, Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933- 1956 (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Week 6: Michael Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2004) supplementary readings:  Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold Story of Racial Inequality in 20th Century America (Harper’s, 2005)  Kevin McMahon, Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown (University of Chicago Press, 2003)  Jonathan Rosenberg, How Far the Promised Land?: World Affairs and the American Civil Rights Movement from the First World War to Vietnam (Princeton University Press, 2005)

Week 7: Thomas Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton University Press, 1998) supplementary readings:  David Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (University of Chicago Press, 2007)  Robert Beauregard, When America Became Suburban (University of Minnesota Press, 2006)  Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (Basic Books, 1990)

Week 8: Colin Gordon, Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in 20th Century America (Princeton University Press, 2004) supplementary readings:  Allen Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (Perennial, 1985)  Owen Gutfreund, Twentieth-Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape (Oxford University Press, 2005)  Susan Levine, School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program (Princeton University Press, 2008)

Week 9: Fredrick Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 1999) supplementary readings:  Tim Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble“: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy,1958-1964 (WW Norton, 1997)  Stephen Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story (University of North Carolina Press, 2005)  Thomas Alan Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Harvard University Press, 2003)

Week 10: Judith Stein, Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism (UNC Press, 1998) supplementary readings:  Jefferson Cowie, Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New Press, 2010)  Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor (Basic Books, 1995)  Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (Yale University Press, 2010)

Week 11: Donald Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Harvard University Press, 2007) supplementary readings:  William A. Link, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (St. Martin’s Press, 2008)  Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton University Press, 2007)  Matthew Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton University Press, 2007)

Week 12: Patrick Hagopian, The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009) supplementary readings:  Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (Harper, 2008)  Kim Moody, From Welfare State to Real Estate: Regime Change in New York City, 1974 to the Present (New Press, 2007)  Linethal and Engelhardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (Holt, 1996)

Week 13: Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2002) supplementary readings:  Karl Boyd Brooks, Before Earth Day: The Origins of American Environmental Law, 1945–1970 (University of Kansas Press, 2009)  Louis Hyman, Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton University Press, 2010)  Saul Cornell, A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (Oxford University Press, 2006)

Week 14: Review

Learning Objectives: By the end of the course, successful students should be able to:  Discuss major problems in American history since 1865 and how scholarly interpretations of these problems have changed over time.  Summarize and critically evaluate historical monographs both verbally and in writing.  Synthesize a historical argument based on the course readings.  Demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the concept of historiography by writing an essay that analyzes the scholarly literature on a particular topic.