Category Archives: Uncategorized

When the United States Invaded Russia: Woodrow Wilson’s Siberian Disaster

Bibliographic Details Author: Carl J. Richard Publisher: University Press of Kansas, 2013 Pages: 216 Thesis Statement Carl J. Richard argues that President Woodrow Wilson’s 1918 decision to dispatch American troops to Siberia represents a crucial yet often overlooked episode in … Continue reading

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American Modernism and the Great War: Rethinking the Progressive Era, 1900-1920

Bibliographic Details Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Harvard University Press, 1998. Thesis Statement Rodgers argues that American progressivism was not an isolated domestic phenomenon but was deeply embedded in a transatlantic conversation about social … Continue reading

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The Day of the Locust: A Novel of Hollywood and the Great Depression

Bibliographic Details Author: Nathanael West Publisher: New Directions Publishing (originally published by Random House, 1939; reissued by New Directions, 1962) Year: 1939 Thesis Statement Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust (1939) stands as the most incisive literary critique of … Continue reading

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The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens

Bibliographic Details Author: Samuel Bowles Publisher: Yale University Press Year: 2016 Note: This book, while not a traditional narrative history, is a landmark work of economic and historical analysis that focuses intensively on the period 1900–1945 to develop its core … Continue reading

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Historical Book Review

The Book Title Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream Bibliographic Details Author: Edward Humes Publisher: Harcourt Brace & Company (a major trade publisher) Year: 2006 Thesis Statement Edward Humes argues that the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of … Continue reading

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American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, 1900-1955

Bibliographic Details Joshua K. Bol. Princeton University Press, 2022. Thesis Statement Bol argues that the United States’ transformation into a global power between 1900 and 1955 was not a linear or inevitable process, but rather a contested, often improvised project … Continue reading

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Andrew J. Huebner, The Warrior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2008)

Bibliographic Details Author: Andrew J. Huebner Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Publication Year: 2008 Thesis Statement Huebner argues that contrary to the widespread myth of a unified “Greatest Generation” and a subsequent cultural rupture during Vietnam, American representations of … Continue reading

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The Ordeal of American Culture: Modernity, Tradition, and the Great Depression

Bibliographic Details Author: Roland Marchand Publisher: University of California Press (Berkeley) Year: 1985 Thesis Statement In Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940, Roland Marchand argues that advertising became the central cultural institution of twentieth-century America, not merely … Continue reading

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The Price of Civilization: America, 1900-1945

Bibliographic Details Author: David M. Kennedy Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Year: 2009 (Originally published as part of the American History: 1900-1945 series, later reissued in hardcover) Thesis Statement Kennedy argues that the central drama of the first half of … Continue reading

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Historical Book Review

The Corporate Reconstruction of America: The Rise of the Managerial State, 1900-1945 Bibliographic Details Author: Martin J. Sklar Publisher: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Historical Sociology series), 1988. Year: 1988 Thesis Statement Martin J. Sklar argues that the period … Continue reading

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