For the People is a historical docutext that examines the evolution of the struggle for peace and justice in America's past, from pre-colonial times to the present. Each chapter begins with a brief historical introduction followed by a series of primary source documents and questions to encourage student comprehension. Sample photographs illustrate the range of peace activists' concerns, while the list of references, focused on the most important works in the field of U.S. peace history, points students toward opportunities for further research. This is the only historical docutext specifically devoted to peace issues. The interpretive analysis of American peace history provided by the editors makes this more than just an anthology of collected documents. As such, the docutext is an extension and a complement to the editors' recently published popular scholarly survey, ""A History of the American Peace Movement from Colonial Times to the Present"". A central idea in this work is that peace is more than just the absence of war. The documents, and the analysis that accompanies them, offer fresh perspectives on the ways in which the peace movement became transformed from one simply opposing war to one proclaiming the importance of social, political, and economic equality. The editors' premise is that the peace movement historically has been a collective attempt by numerous well-intentioned people to improve American society. The book illuminates the ways in which peace activists were often connected to larger reform movements in American history, including those that fought for the rights of working people, for women's equality, and for the abolition of slavery, to name just a few. With a focus on those who spoke out for peace, this docutext is designed to call to students' attention one of the least discussed classroom subjects in American education today. Students in secondary school Social Studies and American history classes as well as those taking college level courses in U.S. history, American Studies, or Peace Studies will find this work an excellent supplementary reader.

A revealing exploration of the origins and development of People's Songs, Inc., "My Song Is My Weapon won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. Robbie Lieberman brings to life the hootenannies, concerts, and rallies of the time, paying special attention to the politics of culture of the Old Left. Her analysis of the communist movement culture, coupled with interviews with former members of People's Songs, sheds new light on Cold War America, the American Communist movement, and the experience of left-wing cultural workers.

The Strangest DreamDrawing on extensive archival material and oral history, Robbie Lieberman illustrates how grassroots peace activism in the United States became associated with Communist subversion after World War II. This association gave proponents of the Cold War a powerful weapon with which to try to silence the opposition. This weapon-anticommunism--was extremely effective until the early 1960s and its effects linger even today. The persecution of peace activists as subversives dates back to the colonial era, but the specific link between communism and peace developed out of the unique conditions of the Cold War-Communist agitation for peace, American notions of national security and freedom that rested on containing communism at all costs. Not until peace organizations challenged external and internal anti-Communist attacks were they able to achieve a new level of respectability.The end of the Cold War enabled scholars to take a fresh look at the peace movement in the early part of that era and how it was affected by fears about communism, whether imagined or real. With this book, Lieberman seeks to clarify American attitudes about peace and the fate of the peace movement in ways that previous studies have overlooked or avoided.

Prairie Power is a superb collection of oral histories from the 1960s focused on former student radicals at the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas, and Southern Illinois University. Robbie Lieberman presents a view of Midwestern New Left activists that has been neglected in previous studies. Scholarship on the sixties has shifted in recent years from a national focus to more local and regional studies, but few authors have studied the student movement in the Midwest. Lieberman brings a fresh interpretation to this subject, challenging the characterization of prairie power activists as "long-haired, dope-smoking anarchists" who were responsible for the downfall of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). She argues that Midwestern students made significant contributions to the New Left and that their efforts were important not only in the 1960s but also had a lasting impact on the universities and towns in which they were active. The oral histories come from national leaders of SDS, homegrown Midwestern activists who were local leaders on their campuses, and from grassroots activists who did not necessarily identify with either local or national organizations. Providing new insight into who participated in student protest and why, Prairie Power makes a significant contribution toward a more comprehensive history of the 1960s.

For the People is a historical docutext that examines the evolution of the struggle for peace and justice in America's past, from pre-colonial times to the present. Each chapter begins with a brief historical introduction followed by a series of primary source documents and questions to encourage student comprehension. Sample photographs illustrate the range of peace activists' concerns, while the list of references, focused on the most important works in the field of U.S. peace history, points students toward opportunities for further research. This is the only historical docutext specifically devoted to peace issues. The interpretive analysis of American peace history provided by the editors makes this more than just an anthology of collected documents. As such, the docutext is an extension and a complement to the editors' recently published popular scholarly survey, ""A History of the American Peace Movement from Colonial Times to the Present"". A central idea in this work is that peace is more than just the absence of war. The documents, and the analysis that accompanies them, offer fresh perspectives on the ways in which the peace movement became transformed from one simply opposing war to one proclaiming the importance of social, political, and economic equality. The editors' premise is that the peace movement historically has been a collective attempt by numerous well-intentioned people to improve American society. The book illuminates the ways in which peace activists were often connected to larger reform movements in American history, including those that fought for the rights of working people, for women's equality, and for the abolition of slavery, to name just a few. With a focus on those who spoke out for peace, this docutext is designed to call to students' attention one of the least discussed classroom subjects in American education today. Students in secondary school Social Studies and American history classes as well as those taking college level courses in U.S. history, American Studies, or Peace Studies will find this work an excellent supplementary reader.