This volume gathers personal recollections by fifteen eminent historians of the American South. Coming from distinctive backgrounds, traveling diverse career paths, and practicing different kinds of history, the contributors exemplify the field's richness on many levels. As they reflect on why they joined the profession and chose their particular research specialties, these historians write eloquently of family and upbringing, teachers and mentors, defining events and serendipitous opportunities. The struggle for civil rights was the defining experience for several contributors. Peter H. Wood remembers how black fans of the St. Louis Cardinals erupted in applause for the Dodgers' Jackie Robinson. ""I realized for the first time,"" writes Wood, ""that there must be something even bigger than hometown loyalties dividing Americans."" Gender equality is another frequent concern in the essays. Anne Firor Scott tells of her advisor's ridicule when childbirth twice delayed Scott's dissertation: ""With great effort I managed to write two chapters, but Professor Handlin was moved to inquire whether I planned to have a baby every chapter."" Yet another prominent theme is the reconciliation of the professional and the personal, as when Bill C. Malone traces his scholarly interests back to ""the memories of growing up poor on an East Texas cotton farm and finding escape and diversion in the sounds of hillbilly music."" Always candid and often witty, each essay is a road map through the intellectual terrain of southern history as practiced during the last half of the twentieth century.

Jenel Virden outlines the causes, courses and consequences of the four major wars of the 20th century in American history, examining how the United States became involved, how the wars were fought; and what the domestic consequences of the wars were. Virden discusses the foreign policy as well as civil liberty implications of American involvement in the First World War, Second World War, Korean War and Vietnam War.

It's not the economy, stupid: How liberal politicians' faith in the healing powers of economic growth-and refusal to address racial divisions-fueled reactionary politics across the South. From FDR to Clinton, charismatic Democratic leaders have promised a New South-a model of social equality and economic opportunity that is always just around the corner. So how did the region become the stronghold of conservative Republicans in thrall to Donald Trump? After a lifetime studying Southern politics, Anthony Badger has come to a provocative conclusion: white liberals failed because they put their faith in policy solutions as an engine for social change and were reluctant to confront directly the explosive racial politics dividing their constituents. After World War II, many Americans believed that if the edifice of racial segregation, white supremacy, and voter disfranchisement could be dismantled across the South, the forces of liberalism would prevail. Hopeful that economic modernization and education would bring about gradual racial change, Southern moderates were rattled when civil rights protest and federal intervention forced their hand. Most were fatalistic in the face of massive resistance. When the end of segregation became inevitable, it was largely driven by activists and mediated by Republican businessmen. Badger follows the senators who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto and rejected Nixon's Southern Strategy. He considers the dilemmas liberals faced across the South, arguing that their failure cannot be blamed simply on entrenched racism. Conservative triumph was not inevitable, he argues, before pointing to specific false steps and missed opportunities. Could the biracial coalition of low-income voters that liberal politicians keep counting on finally materialize? Badger sees hope but urges Democrats not to be too complacent.

In chronicling the life and career of Albert Gore, Sr., historian Anthony J. Badger seeks not just to explore the successes and failures of an important political figure who spent more than three decades in the national eye-and whose son would become Vice President of the United States-but also to explain the dramatic changes in the South that led to national political realignment. Born on a small farm in the hills of Tennessee, Gore served in Congress from 1938 to 1970, first in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate. During that time, the United States became a global superpower and the South a two party desegregated region. Gore, whom Badger describes as a policy-oriented liberal, saw the federal government as the answer to the South's problems. He held a resilient faith, according to Badger, in the federal government to regulate wages and prices in World War II, to further social welfare through the New Deal and the Great Society, and to promote economic growth and transform the infrastructure of the South. Gore worked to make Tennessee the "atomic capital" of the nation and to protect the Tennessee Valley Authority, while at the same time cosponsoring legislation to create the national highway system. He was more cautious in his approach to civil rights; though bolder than his moderate Southern peers, he struggled to adjust to the shifting political ground of the 1960s. His career was defined by his relationship with Lyndon Johnson, whose Vietnam policies Gore bitterly opposed. The injection of Christian perspectives into the state's politics ultimately distanced Gore's worldview from that of his constituents. Altogether, Gore's political rise and fall, Badger argues, illuminates the significance of race, religion, and class in the creation of the modern South.

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.

This study is the first to trace a single Agricultural Adjustment Administration commodity program and to assess the impact of a major New Deal program in North Carolina. The freezing of tobacco growing brought prosperity to the growers but little benefit to the small and tenant farmer. Given the problems that affected both AAA policy making and implementation, the New Deas's choice lay not between a limited or a radical program but between the limited program or none at all.
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Leading scholars reassess the origins and trajectory of the American civil rights movement. Essays highlight the importance of black activism in the 1930s and 1940s and show how white liberals misunderstood the movement. Comparisons with Britain and South Africa reveal how movement leaders secured sympathetic responses at home and abroad and how nonviolence characterised the movement. The essays also challenge traditional concepts of 'race' and 'racial equality', consider the impact of the struggle on participants and trace black political thought since the 1960s.

Mr. Badger's notably successful history is not simply another narrative of the New Deal, nor does the figure of Franklin Roosevelt loom as large in his account as in some others. What he does is to consider important aspects of New Deal activity in industry, organized labor, agriculture, welfare, and politics and explores the major problems in interpreting the history of each. "The finest survey since William Leuchtenburg's Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal." Frank Freidel.

This collection of thoughtful and timely essays offers refreshing and intelligent new perspectives on postwar American liberalism. Sophisticated yet accessible, Making Sense of American Liberalism challenges popular myths about liberalism in the United States. The volume presents the Democratic Party and liberal reform efforts such as civil rights, feminism, labor, and environmentalism as a more united, more radical force than has been depicted in scholarship and the media emphasizing the decline and disunity of the left. Distinguished contributors assess the problems liberals have confronted in the twentieth century, examine their strategies for reform, and chart the successes and potential for future liberal reform. Contributors are Anthony J. Badger, Jonathan Bell, Lizabeth Cohen, Susan Hartmann, Ella Howard, Bruce Miroff, Nelson Lichtenstein, Doug Rossinow, Timothy Stanley, and Timothy Thurber.

In this defining statement about the state of the discipline, a "who's who" of prominent scholars addresses and critiques the entire sweep of American political history. Exemplifying the revitalizing power of the "new political history" and its renewed emphasis on large "P" politics, these writers have combined to produce an illuminating synthesis of the most recent work in the field.

Focusing upon both the major policy issues in the politics of each period (substance) and the major social forces shaping politics (structure), these essays chronicle and evaluate the evolution of American politics and society over two and a quarter centuries. In the process, they reflect their authors' strong collective commitment to a dynamic field of intellectual inquiry, while simultaneously highlighting key interpretive disputes within it.

An outstanding summary of current and recent thinking in the field, this book should become an essential volume for scholars and teachers in both history and the social sciences.