Category Archives: Uncategorized

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

Bibliographic Details Ira Katznelson. W.W. Norton & Company, 2005. Thesis Statement Katznelson argues that the major social welfare and labor legislation of the New Deal and the postwar era—from the Wagner Act and Social Security to the GI Bill—was deliberately … Continue reading

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No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

Bibliographic Details Doris Kearns Goodwin. Simon & Schuster, 1994. Thesis Statement Goodwin argues that the unique partnership between Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt created a synergistic leadership that transformed the American home front during World War II, simultaneously mobilizing the nation … Continue reading

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As Great a War as Any: The American Experience in the Second World War

Bibliographic Details Michael C.C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II, 2nd Edition (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) Thesis Statement Adams argues that the popular American memory of World War II as a “good war”—a unified, noble, … Continue reading

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America in the Great War: The Rise of the War Welfare State

Bibliographic Details Ronald Schaffer. America in the Great War: The Rise of the War Welfare State. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. xvii + 244 pp. Thesis Statement Schaffer argues that the American mobilization for World War I did not … Continue reading

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The Great War: The End of an Era and the Making of the Modern American State

Bibliographic Details Author: Robert H. Zieger Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Year: 2000 Thesis Statement Robert H. Zieger’s The Great War argues that World War I was the single most transformative event in modern American history, fundamentally reshaping the … Continue reading

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Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation

Bibliographic Details Author: David E. Nye Publisher: Oxford University Press Year: 1985 (Revised paperback edition, 1990) Thesis Statement David E. Nye’s Forces of Production argues that the rise of industrial automation in the United States between 1900 and 1945 was … Continue reading

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The Color of Money: The Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

Bibliographic Details Mehrsa Baradaran, Harvard University Press, 2017. Thesis Statement Mehrsa Baradaran argues that the persistent racial wealth gap in the United States was not an accident of history or a product of individual failings, but rather a deliberate outcome … Continue reading

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The Lost World of the Progressives: The American Search for Order, 1900-1945

Bibliographic Details Author: Robert M. Crunden Publisher: Basic Books (a division of HarperCollins) Year of Publication: 1982 Thesis Statement Robert M. Crunden argues that the Progressive impulse—a distinctively American moral and intellectual framework rooted in Protestant reform, social science, and … Continue reading

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The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in Central America

Bibliographic Details Author: Jason M. Colby Publisher: Cornell University Press Year: 2011 Thesis Statement Jason M. Colby’s The Business of Empire argues that the United Fruit Company, operating in Central America from the late nineteenth century through World War II, … Continue reading

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Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945-1953

Bibliographic Details Arnold A. Offner. Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945-1953. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. Thesis Statement Offner argues that President Harry S. Truman’s rigid, confrontational, and often poorly informed approach to foreign policy—characterized … Continue reading

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