The Making of Modern America

The Nation from 1945 to the Present

By (author) Gary A. Donaldson

Publication date:

29 August 2017

Length of book:

472 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Dimensions:

238x161mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781538104453

The third edition of Dr. Gary A. Donaldson’s highly successful textbook The Making of Modern America, introduces students to the cultural, social and political paths the United States has traveled from the end of WWII to the present day. While deftly cataloging the sweeping changes and major events in America from “Dewey Defeats Truman” through the election of Donald Trump, this newly updated edition never loses touch with that American history taking place at the level of the people. This edition details not just the United States’ rich cultural history, but elegantly repositions it as integral to our understanding of any portion of this country’s past. Donaldson provides a factual foundation for students and then pushes them to interpret those facts, framing the discussions essential to any complete study of American history.

Preface

Chapter 1: Postwar Adjustments
Chapter 2: The Early Cold War
Chapter 3: Affluence and Anxiety: America in the 1950s
Chapter 4: The Eisenhower Presidency
Chapter 5: Kennedy at Home and Abroad
Chapter 6: “We Shall Continue”
Chapter 7: The Nation in the 1960s
Chapter 8: Out of the 1960s and into the 1970s: The Agony of Change
Chapter 9: America in the 1970s: The Post-Watergate Years
Chapter 10: The Reagan Years
Chapter 11: The Kinder, Gentler Conservatism of George H. W. Bush
Chapter 12: Bill Clinton’s America
Chapter 13: America after the New Millennium
Chapter 14: The Second Bush and Obama: From the War on Terrorism to the Audacity of Hope

Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author

“The third edition of Gary A. Donaldson’s The Making of Modern America is a splendid history of the country’s complex saga from its post-World War II adjustments, to the era of presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. Donaldson punctuates each of his lucid and fast-paced chapters with a reading, a document, and questions—pedagogy that supplements or complicates his narrative. Students and their teachers will welcome Donaldson’s sure-handed analysis of America’s modern era—a time of momentous challenges to its status as the world’s richest and most innovative country.”