Modern America: A Documentary History of the Nation Since 1945

This primary source reader assembles key documents and firsthand accounts that are emblematic of American life from the end of World War II to the present. Designed to complement a core text for a typical post-1945 U.S. history course, the book offers conciseness and selectivity with balanced coverage of domestic and foreign, societal and cultural issues grouped together chronologically. The readings afford students compelling and sometimes startling insights into the nation's postwar adaptation to its new position of global power and responsibility, wealth, and rapid social change; on through years of energy and ambition, conflict and tragedy, to the post-Vietnam malaise and the rise of Ronald Reagan, the frenzied nineties, and the arrival of the new millennium. Each chapter includes an introduction that sets the documents in historical context, a biographical sketch of a significant person of the time, study questions, and suggestions for further reading.

Gary Donaldson

Chapter 1 Origins of the Cold War; Chapter 2 Postwar Political Trends; Chapter 3 Origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement; Chapter 4 The Eisenhower Administration's "New Look" Foreign Policy; Chapter 5 The Fifties Lifestyle; Chapter 6 The Cold War Heats Up During the Kennedy Administration; Chapter 7 Lyndon Johnson's War; Chapter 8 Sixties Society and Culture; Chapter 9 Political Trends on the Left and the Right; Chapter 10 Civil Rights Victories and Divisions; Chapter 11 Polarization and Protest; Chapter 12 Nixon and the End of U.S. Involvement in Indochina; Chapter 13 The Environmental and Consumer Movements; Chapter 14 The Tragedy of Watergate; Chapter 15 Feminism and American Society; Chapter 16 The Emergence of Ronald Reagan and the New Right; Chapter 17 The Reagan Foreign Policy and a New Soviet Confrontation; Chapter 18 More Culture Wars; Chapter 19 Bill Clinton's America and the Impeachment of a President; Chapter 20 The Election of George W. Bush, Terrorism, and the Crisis in the Gulf;