"Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look."
-President Ronald Reagan, January 20, 1981
Hero. It was a word most Americans weren't using much in 1980. As they waited on gas and unemployment lines, as their enemies abroad grew ever more aggressive, and as one after another their leaders failed them, Americans began to believe the country's greatness was fading.
Yet within two years the recession and gas shortage were over. Before the decade was out, the Cold War was won, the Berlin Wall came crashing down, and America was once more at the height of prosperity. And the nation had a new hero: Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Reagan's greatness is today widely acknowledged, but his legacy is still misunderstood. Democrats accept the effectiveness of his foreign policy but ignore the success of his domestic programs; Republicans cheer his victories over liberalism while ignoring his bitter battles with his own party's establishment; historians speak of his eloquence and charisma but gloss over his brilliance in policy and clarity of vision.
From Steven F. Hayward, the critically acclaimed author of "The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order," comes the first complete, true story of this misunderstood, controversial, and deeply consequential presidency. Hayward pierces the myths and media narratives, masterfully documenting exactly what transpired behind the scenes during Reagan's landmark presidency and revealing his real legacy.
What emerges is a compelling portrait of a man who arrived in office after thirty years of practical schooling in the ways of politics and power, possessing a clear vision of where he wanted to take the nation and a willingness to take firm charge of his own administration. His relentless drive to shrink government and lift the burdens of high taxation was born of a deep appreciation for the grander blessings of liberty. And it was this same outlook, extended to the world's politically and economically enslaved nations, that shaped his foreign policy and lent his statecraft its great unifying power.
Over a decade in the making, and filled with fresh revelations, surprising insights, and an unerring eye for the telling detail, this provocative and authoritative book recalls a time when true leadership inspired a fallen nation to pick itself up, hold its head high, and take up the cause of freedom once again.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Texas writer-historian Mike Cox explores the origin and rise of the famed Texas Rangers. Starting in 1821 with just a handful of men, the Rangers' first purpose was to keep settlers safe from the feared and gruesome Karankawa Indians, a cannibalistic tribe that wandered the Texas territory. As the influx of settlers grew, the attacks increased, and it became clear that a larger, better trained force was necessary.

Taking readers through the major social and political movements of the Texas territory and into its statehood, Cox shows how the Rangers were a defining force in the stabilization and the creation of Texas. From Stephen Austin in the early days through the Civil War, the first eighty years of the Texas Rangers were nothing less than phenomenal, and the efforts put forth in those days set the foundation for the Texas Rangers who keep Texas safe today.

The towering figure who sought to transform America into a "Great Society" but whose ambitions and presidency collapsed in the tragedy of the Vietnam War

Few figures in American history are as compelling and complex as Lyndon Baines Johnson, who established himself as the master of the U.S. Senate in the 1950s and succeeded John F. Kennedy in the White House after Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963.

Charles Peters, a keen observer of Washington politics for more than five decades, tells the story of Johnson's presidency as the tale of an immensely talented politician driven by ambition and desire. As part of the Kennedy-Johnson administration from 1961 to 1968, Peters knew key players, including Johnson's aides, giving him inside knowledge of the legislative wizardry that led to historic triumphs like the Voting Rights Act and the personal insecurities that led to the tragedy of Vietnam.

Peters's experiences have given him unique insight into the poisonous rivalry between Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy, showing how their misunderstanding of each other exacerbated Johnson's self-doubt and led him into the morass of Vietnam, which crippled his presidency and finally drove this larger-than-life man from the office that was his lifelong ambition.

In Reading Appalachia from Left to Right, Carol Mason examines the legacies of a pivotal 1974 curriculum dispute in West Virginia that heralded the rightward shift in American culture and politics. At a time when black nationalists and white conservatives were both maligned as extremists for opposing education reform, the wife of a fundamentalist preacher who objected to new language-arts textbooks featuring multiracial literature sparked the yearlong conflict. It was the most violent textbook battle in America, inspiring mass marches, rallies by white supremacists, boycotts by parents, and strikes by coal miners. Schools were closed several times due to arson and dynamite while national and international news teams descended on Charleston.

A native of Kanawha County, Mason infuses local insight into this study of historically left-leaning protesters ushering in cultural conservatism. Exploring how reports of the conflict as a hillbilly feud affected all involved, she draws on substantial archival research and interviews with Klansmen, evangelicals, miners, bombers, and businessmen, a who, like herself, were residents of Kanawha County during the dispute. Mason investigates vulgar accusations of racism that precluded a richer understanding of how ethnicity, race, class, and gender blended together as white protesters set out to protect "our children's souls."

In the process, she demonstrates how the significance of the controversy goes well beyond resistance to social change on the part of Christian fundamentalists or a cultural clash between elite educators and working-class citizens. The alliances, tactics, and political discourses that emerged in the Kanawha Valley in 1974 crossed traditional lines, inspiring innovations in neo-Nazi organizing, propelling Christian conservatism into the limelight, and providing models for women of the New Right.

The Hundred Days, Franklin Roosevelt's first fifteen weeks in office, have become the stuff of legend, a mythic yardstick against which every subsequent American president has felt obliged to measure himself. The renowned historian Anthony J. Badger cuts through decades of politicized history to provide a succinct, balanced, and timely reminder that Roosevelt's accomplishment was above all else an exercise in exceptional political craftsmanship. Roosevelt entered the White House in 1933 confronting 25 percent unemployment, bank closings, and a nationwide crisis in confidence. From March 9 to June 16, FDR secured sixteen major bills, many of which gave extraordinary discretionary power to the president. From legalizing the sale of beer to providing mortgage relief to millions of Americans, Roosevelt launched the New Deal that conservatives have been working to roll back ever since. Reintroducing the contingency that marked those fateful days, Badger humanizes Roosevelt and suggests a far more useful yardstick for future presidents: the politics of the possible under the guidance of principle.

The "accidental" president whose innate decency and steady hand restored the presidency after its greatest crisis When Gerald R. Ford entered the White House in August 1974, he inherited a presidency tarnished by the Watergate scandal, the economy was in a recession, the Vietnam War was drawing to a close, and he had taken office without having been elected. Most observers gave him little chance of success, especially after he pardoned Richard Nixon just a month into his presidency, an action that outraged many Americans, but which Ford thought was necessary to move the nation forward.
Many people today think of Ford as a man who stumbled a lot--clumsy on his feet and in politics--but acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley shows him to be a man of independent thought and conscience, who never allowed party loyalty to prevail over his sense of right and wrong. As a young congressman, he stood up to the isolationists in the Republican leadership, promoting a vigorous role for America in the world. Later, as House minority leader and as president, he challenged the right wing of his party, refusing to bend to their vision of confrontation with the Communist world. And after the fall of Saigon, Ford also overruled his advisers by allowing Vietnamese refugees to enter the United States, arguing that to do so was the humane thing to do.
Brinkley draws on exclusive interviews with Ford and on previously unpublished documents (including a remarkable correspondence between Ford and Nixon stretching over four decades), fashioning a masterful reassessment of Gerald R. Ford's presidency and his underappreciated legacy to the nation.

Friedrich von Boetticher was Germany’s only military attaché accredited to the United States between the world wars. As such, he was Germany’s official military observer in the capital of the nation whose potential as an ally of those powers arrayed against Adolf Hitler in the 1930s might have given the dictator pause in any predatory plans he harbored against his neighbors. Though von Boetticher produced a rich and detailed commentary on military and political affairs in Washington in the eight years prior to the outbreak of war between Germany and the United States in 1941, he was nonetheless accused after the war of misjudging America’s productive potential and misleading Hitler with overly optimistic reports. As Alfred M. Beck points out, what he actually told German authorities in Berlin is strikingly different from what his detractors later claimed. Von Boetticher “permits a glimpse into the sociology of a conservative officer caste at once assailed by the politics of a regime and the impossibilities imposed on it, its weaknesses in resisting its evils, and its eventual failure to present an alternative to National Socialism’s illusory attractions.� A loyal German, von Boetticher had strong ties to America. His mother was American-born, he spoke English fluently, and he was enamored of American military history. He was also anti-Semitic and believed that“Jewish wire-pullers� had undue influence over the U.S. government and its policies. His professional ties to U.S. Army officers in the War Department were so strong—supplying them, for example, with details on German air strength and operations during the Battle of Britain in 1940—that they survived until August 1941 and long after the German ambassador himself had been recalled. Torn between his duty to Germany (though the Nazi regime had attempted to harm his son) and his deep affection for America, von Boetticher stood among the broad middle range of German officials who were neither perpetrator nor victim.

In this political history of the labour movement, Clayton Sinyai examines the relationship between labour activism and the American democratic tradition.

At the height of the Cold War, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations made removing Fidel Castro's regime one of their highest foreign policy priorities. "The Castro Obsession" provides new insight into the bold U.S. covert war against Cuba that lasted from 1959 until 1965. Eisenhower and Kennedy's fervent desire to get rid of Castro led to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, but the efforts to oust his regime did not end there. It became an obsession. Primarily through the CIA and the military, the United States resorted to economic and political destabilization, propaganda, sabotage, hit-and-run raids, and assassination plots to try to topple the regime. This secret war was one of the most wide-ranging, sustained, expensive, and ultimately futile covert action campaigns in history. Was this secret war wise, and did it ultimately promote U.S. interests? Don Bohning says no. Even if the details were murky, the extreme American pressure on Cuba was apparent to all, and this heavy-handedness severely damaged the U.S. image in Latin America and much of the Third World. Instead of ridding the hemisphere of a dictator, these efforts increased his international political fame and provided him the excuse for more repression in Cuba. U.S. attempts to overthrow Castro also had dire unintended consequences, such as contributing to the Soviet decision to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, which produced the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War. Bohning sheds new light on this covert war, revealing that it was even more extensive, risky, and long-lived than previously thought.

"The Boston Police Strike, long forgotten and too long ignored, is here described with great drama and verve by Francis Russell. It is an extraordinary moment in the history of Boston, as well as an important event in the nation's labor history." -Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States On September 9, 1919, an American nightmare came true. The entire Boston police force deserted their posts, leaving the city virtually defenseless. Women were raped on street corners, stores were looted, and pedestrians were beaten and robbed while crowds not only looked on but cheered. The police strike and the mayhem that followed made an inconspicuous governor, Calvin Coolidge, known throughout America, turning him into a national hero and, eventually, a president. It also created a monster: for two days, more than 700,000 residents of Boston's urban core were without police protection, and the mob ruled the streets. "Francis Russell is wonderfully aware of the subtle but important distinctions of class and neighborhood that have been so much a part of Boston's history. A City in Terror is well written, full of shrewd social analysis and cultural history, and provides an account that gives perspective to today's serious confrontations." -Robert Coles, New York Review of Books "Compelling and lively . . . A City in Terror has plenty of drama and heroes and villains. Russell is at home in the history of the era and in Massachusetts, and he tells his story well; A City in Terror makes stimulating reading." -David M. Reimers, American Historical Review "A fascinating study and social history of one of the strangest episodes in American labor history . . . as well as an unforgettable lesson in the machinations of big-city and state politics." -The New Republic Francis Russell was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1910. He attended Boston-area schools and during World War II was a captain in the Black Watch Royal Canadian Highlanders. He is the author of Tragedy in Dedham: The Story of the Sacco and Vanzetti Case, which won the Edgar Allen Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Russell died in 1989.

Originally a New Deal liberal and aggressive anticommunist, Senator Eugene McCarthy famously lost faith with the Democratic party over Vietnam. His stunning challenge to Lyndon Johnson in the 1968 New Hampshire primary inspired young liberals and was one of the greatest electoral upsets in American history. But the 1968 election ultimately brought Richard Nixon and the Republican Party to power, irrevocably shifting the country's political landscape to the right for decades to come.
Dominic Sandbrook traces one of the most remarkable and significant lives in postwar politics, a career marked by both courage and arrogance. Sandbrook draws on extensive new research - including interviews with McCarthy himself - to show convincingly how Eugene McCarthy's political experience embodies the larger decline of American liberalism after World War II. These were tumultuous times in American politics, and Sandbrook vividly captures the drama and historical significance through his intimate portrait of a singularly interesting man at the heart of it all.

"Admirers of FDR credit his New Deal with restoring the American economy after the disastrous contraction of 1929--33. Truth to tell-as Powell demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt-the New Deal hampered recovery from the contraction, prolonged and added to unemployment, and set the stage for ever more intrusive and costly government. Powell's analysis is thoroughly documented, relying on an impressive variety of popular and academic literature both contemporary and historical."
-Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Hoover Institution
"There is a critical and often forgotten difference between disaster and tragedy. Disasters happen to us all, no matter what we do. Tragedies are brought upon ourselves by hubris. The Depression of the 1930s would have been a brief disaster if it hadn't been for the national tragedy of the New Deal. Jim Powell has proven this."
-P.J. O'Rourke, author of "Parliament of Whores and "Eat the Rich
"The material laid out in this book desperately needs to be available to a much wider audience than the ranks of professional economists and economic historians, if policy confusion similar to the New Deal is to be avoided in the future."
-James M. Buchanan, Nobel Laureate, George Mason University
"I found Jim Powell's book fascinating. I think he has written an important story, one that definitely needs telling."
-Thomas Fleming, author of "The New Dealers' War
"Jim Powell is one tough-minded historian, willing to let the chips fall where they may. That's a rare quality these days, hence more valuable than ever. He lets the history do the talking."
-David Landes, Professor of History Emeritus, Harvard University
"Jim Powell drawstogether voluminous economic research on the effects of all of Roosevelt's major policies. Along the way, Powell gives fascinating thumbnail sketches of the major players. The result is a devastating indictment, compellingly told. Those who think that government intervention helped get the U.S. economy out of the depression should read this book."
-David R. Henderson, editor of "The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics and author of "The Joy of Freedom
The Great Depression and the New Deal. For generations, the collective American consciousness has believed that the former ruined the country and the latter saved it. Endless praise has been heaped upon President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for masterfully reining in the Depression's destructive effects and propping up the
country on his New Deal platform. In fact, FDR has achieved mythical status in American history and is considered to be, along with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents of all time. But would the Great Depression have been so catastrophic had the New Deal never been implemented?
In FDR's Folly, historian Jim Powell argues that it was in fact the New Deal itself, with its shortsighted programs, that deepened the Great Depression, swelled the federal government, and prevented the country from turning around quickly. You'll discover in alarming detail how FDR's federal programs hurt America more than helped it, with effects we still feel today, including:
- How Social Security actually increased unemployment
- How higher taxes undermined good businesses
- How new labor laws threw people out of work
- And much more
This groundbreaking book pulls back the shroud ofawe and the cloak of time enveloping FDR to prove convincingly how flawed his economic policies actually were, despite his good intentions and the astounding intellect of his circle of advisers. In today's turbulent domestic and global environment, eerily similar to that of the 1930s, it's more important than ever before to uncover and understand the truth of our history, lest we be doomed to repeat it.

"From the Hardcover edition.

Thousands of African Americans poured into northwest Indiana in the 1920s dreaming of decent-paying jobs and a life without Klansmen, chain gangs, and cotton. Black Freedom Fighters in Steel: The Struggle for Democratic Unionism by Ruth Needleman adds a new dimension to the literature on race and labor. It tells the story of five men born in the South who migrated north for a chance to work the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the steel mills. Individually they fought for equality and justice; collectively they helped construct economic and union democracy in postwar America. George Kimbley, the oldest, grew up in Kentucky across the street from the family who had owned his parents. He fought with a French regiment in World War I and then settled in Gary, Indiana, in 1920 to work in steel. He joined the Steelworkers Organizing Committee and became the first African American member of its full-time staff in 1938. The youngest, Jonathan Comer, picked cotton on his father's land in Alabama, stood up to racism in the military during World War II, and became the first African American to be president of a basic steel local union. This is a book about the integration of unions, as well as about five remarkable individuals. It focuses on the decisive role of African American leaders in building interracial unionism. One chapter deals with the African American struggle for representation, highlighting the importance of independent black organization within the union. Needleman also presents a conversation among two pioneering steelworkers and current African American union leaders about the racial politics of union activism.

Worked Over is a book about large-scale social change seen at close range, through the lives of generations of working people in a small manufacturing center along New York State's old Erie Canal. Their compelling stories add a new dimension to current debates over corporate power and the public good. Dimitra Doukas draws on ten years of ethnographic and historical research on the Mohawk River Valley towns of Herkimer, Illion, Frankfort, and Mohawk, where the Remington company, maker of arms and typewriters among other things, was for many years the backbone of a thriving regional society. Corporate takeover of the varied Remington enterprises in 1886 sent shock waves through this society, ushering in a century of social distress and decreasing political autonomy. Since the 1970s, the area has suffered mightily from deindustrialization. Local experience, Doukas finds, has shaped an American culture of strongly egalitarian ideals. From this perspective, the region's present plight appears, to many in the region, as a betrayal of American values. Knitting together the ethnographic present, the remembered past, and the historical past, the author tracks today's discontent to the dawn of the modern corporate era for a revealing and intimate look at the rise of a new political and economic power structure.

Ido Oren challenges American political science's definition of itself as an objective science attached to democracy. The material Oren unearthed in his research into the discipline's ideological nature may discomfit many: Woodrow Wilson's admiration of Prussia's efficient bureaucracy; the favorable review of Mein Kampf published in the American Political Science Review; the involvement of political scientists in village pacification and interrogation of Viet Cong prisoners during the Vietnam War. Oren reveals the fervently pro-German views of the founder of the discipline, John W. Burgess, who stated that the Teutonic race was politically superior to all others, and he presents evidence of a long-term, intimate relationship between the discipline and the national security agencies of the U.S. government.

Oren documents a systematic pattern of historical change in the discipline's characterization of America and America's chief enemies (Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Stalin's Russia). These characterizations, he finds, swing from pre-conflict ideological "accommodationism" to post-conflict "nationalism." Substantial traces of this historical process, in which politics and scholarship intertwine, still remain in the supposedly objective concepts and data sets of contemporary political science. Our Enemies and US is more than an expose, however. Oren urges academics to be more sensitive to the moral ramifications of their work and to reflect on issues fundamental to the identity of political science. The discipline, he says, must take into account the historical position of its own scholarship."

The spectre of Simon Bolivar hovers once again over Latin America as the aims and ambitions of the Liberator are taken up by Comandante Hugo Chavez, the charismatic and controversial President of Venezuela. Welcomed by the inhabitants of the teeming shanty towns of Caracas as their potential saviour, and greeted by Washington with considerable alarm, this former golpista-turned-democrat has already begun the most wide-ranging transformation of oil-rich Venezuela for 500 years, and has dramatically affected the political debate throughout Latin America. In a first-hand report from Venezuela, correspondent Richard Gott places the Comandante in historical perspective, and examines his plans and programmes. He describes the support and opposition that these attract, and argues that this experiment may prove a new way forward for Latin America.

Not since the Civil War was America so riven by conflict as it was during Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. His bold initiatives and his willingness to break historic precedent in handling the Great Depression and the coming of World War II were challenged by giant figures of the era, powerful public men each with their own fierce constituencies. Albert Fried brings out the tremendous drama in Roosevelt's ideological and personal struggle with five influential men: ex-New York governor and presidential candidate Al Smith, the enormously popular "radio priest" Charles E. Coughlin, Louisiana Senator Huey Long, labor champion John L. Lewis, and the universally adored aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. An enthralling story of a critical period in this century's history, FDR and His Enemies reveals the intellectual, moral, and tactical underpinnings of a great debate in which Roosevelt always triumphed.

Early in this century, growing cities seeking to promote their communities came to view the budding local football team as an agent of civic progress and took the necessary measures to see that their interests were ably represented.

As a result, semiprofessional clubs such as the Ironton Tanks and the Portsmouth Spartans faced off against such legendary teams as the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. Towns scrambled to raise subscription dollars to build new stadiums, buy contracts for prospective stars, and finance the many road trips.

Capturing the local color of a region as well as the spirited charm of a sport as it came into its own -- before the rules were formalized and the teams so strongly established -- Carl Becker documents a rare time in American history when ideals were being formed and broken and the promise for greatness seemed just within reach of all who tried to grasp it.

Home and Away is a unique chronicle -- more than just a history of the game of football, it is also an intimate study of how the citizens and organizations that made up these cities worked to put themselves on the map of an ever-shifting American landscape.

The New Deal was not the same deal for men and women--a finding strikingly demonstrated in Divided Citizens. Rich with implications for current debates over citizenship and welfare policy, this book provides a detailed historical account of how governing institutions and public policies shape social status and civic life. In her examination of the impact of New Deal social and labor policies on the organization and character of American citizenship, Suzanne Mettler offers an incisive analysis of the formation and implementation of the pillars of the modern welfare state: the Social Security Act, including Old Age and Survivors' Insurance, Old Age Assistance, Unemployment Insurance, and Aid to Dependent Children (later known simply as "welfare"), as well as the Fair Labor Standards Act, which guaranteed the minimum wage.

Mettler draws on the methods of historical-institutionalists to develop a "structured governance" approach to her analysis of the New Deal. She shows how the new welfare state institutionalized gender politically, most clearly by incorporating men, particularly white men, into nationally administered policies and consigning women to more variable state-run programs. Differential incorporation of citizens, in turn, prompted different types of participation in politics. These gender-specific consequences were the outcome of a complex interplay of institutional dynamics, political imperatives, and the unintended consequences of policy implementation actions. By tracing the subtle and complicated political dynamics that emerged with New Deal policies, Mettler sounds a cautionary note as we once again negotiate the bounds of American federalism and public policy.

Rarely recognized outside its boundaries today, the Pacific Northwest region known at the turn of the century as the Inland Empire included portions of the states of Washington and Idaho, as well as British Columbia. The author of this study traces the history of this self-proclaimed region from its origins through its heyday. In doing so, she challenges the characterization of regions as fixed places defined by their geography, economy and demographics. Regions, she argues, are best understood as mental constructs, internally defined through conflicts and debates among different groups of people seeking to control a particular area's identity and direction. She tells the story of the Inland Empire as a complex narrative of competing perceptions and interests.

A definitive life of the flawed man who succeeded to the American presidency after Lincoln's assassination.

Politically shrewd but fatally unable to adapt to new political realities, Andrew Johnson presided, disastrously, over the tumultuous first years of Reconstruction. In this provocative account, Hans Trefousse gives us "a brilliant, compassionate portrait of a dynamic era of social change and national healing, and of the tragic failure of an American leader" (Library Journal).

"A readable new biography of the 17th president that fills in many of the hidden corners of his life story. . . . The story of the man and the times that led to his impeachment is told with great authority." —Herbert Mitgang, New York Times

In Roosevelt's Blues Guido van Rijn documents more than a hundred blues and gospel lyrics that contain direct political comment about FDR. Altogether, they convey the thought, spirit, and history of the African-American population during the Roosevelt era. Included in the book are recorded sermons by Rev. J.M. Gates and lyrics to songs recorded by such notable musicians as Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter, Big Bill Broonzy, "Champion" Jack Dupree, Sonny Boy Williamson, Josh White, the Mississippi Sheiks, and many others. Using these sources, which have been neglected by historians, van Rijn documents Roosevelt's vast popularity among blacks.

The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913�

Powerful and compelling. . . . Eisenhower is not only an accomplished military historian, he's also a storyteller in the tradition of Bruce Caton and Shelby Foote." —Steve Neal, Chicago Sun-Times

In May 1916, six American soldiers led by Lieutenant George S. Patton, Jr., surrounded a building near Rubio, Chihuahua. When the occupants burst out of the door, guns blazing, Patton and his men cut them down. A month later seventy American troopers charged into a strong Mexican position at Carrizal; ten were killed and twenty-three taken prisoner. In 1914, a powerful American naval force seized Mexico's principal seaport, Veracruz, and occupied the city for six months. Yet, all the while, Mexico and the United States were technically at peace.

The United States began its involvement in the Mexican Revolution in 1913 with President Woodrow Wilson's decision to remove Victoriana Huerta, leader of a military junta that overthrew and murdered Mexico's president, Francisco Madero. Diplomatic actions failing, Wilson occupied Veracruz, cutting off Huerta's supplies of arms from abroad. When in 1916 the legendary bandit Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, Wilson sent General John J. Pershing into Chihuahua to capture him.

This story leads readers to increased respect for the people of Mexico and its revolutionary leaders—Zapata, Obregon, Carranza, and Pancho Villa. It shows that, while American troops performed well, U.S. intervention had no effect on the outcome of the Mexican Revolution. The American army had a taste of battle and Pershing went on to become the greatest American hero of the First World War.

"A vivid and masterful account of the terrible discord and violence of those years." —C. Vann Woodward

Victorious in a great and "good" war, the United States in 1945 bestrode the world unchallenged, but by 1960 that dominance was eroding. For fifteen tense and troubled years, between the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, the United States struggled to direct its domestic life and its role in a rapidly changing world.

These years are as rich as any in American history: rich in incident—from the Cuban Missile Crisis and the civil rights struggle to the antiwar movement and the opening of China; rich in personality—from Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to Henry Kissinger, Lyndon Johnson, and the Beatles. Years of Discord is a story of turning points of power and decline, conflict and idealism, of a time that has found in John Morton Blum its ablest chronicler.

"In this incisive, judicious and eminently readable book, a master historian tels the story of those tangled and turbulent years just behind us—years that shook and remolded the republic." —Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

"Once again, John Morton Blum has brought to life a critical period of American history. An illuminating account of the amazing Sixties, and an invaluable contribution to the history of our times." —Robert G. Kaiser, Washington Post