Working-Class Americanism

Gary Gerstle is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland. College Park. He is the author of the forthcoming American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (see page 7 in this catalog).

"The transformation of ethnically insular workers into passionate American activists is an important story, which Gerstle recounts with unusual subtlety... No one has explored the meaning of Americanism to workers with more intelligence and insight."--Alan Brinkley, New York Review of Books "Scintillating... [Gerstle] uses the method [of social history] with striking originality to tackle the thorny questions of Americanism."--Alan Dawley, The Nation "[A] fascinating new book... One of the great feats of this book is Gerstle's ability to show that intellectual history is not some ethereal, separable history of abstract 'ideas' but is rather a product of class relations born at the workplace."--Dana Frank, In These Times "The most provocative account of working-class politics in the 1930s and 1940s."--John Bodnar, Journal of American History "[A] pathbreaking, impeccably researched history... The sheer scope of this study ... is breathtaking."--Richard M. Vallely, International Labor and Working Class History "A remarkably rich and thoroughly rewarding study of life, labor, and politics in a 20th century industrial community."--Stuart M. Blumin, Labor History "Important... To read Gerstle ... is to think a little more freely of this country's possibilities... [T]he sobriety and sheer depth of Gerstle's engagement with real Americans' struggles spells relief from tributes to 'forgotten warriors' that read like old placards in a May Day parade. Study 'the people' here first."--Jim Sleeper, Los Angeles Times Book Review

• List of Figures xi Acknowledgments xiii INTRODUCTION 3 CHAPTER 1 Theodore Roosevelt's Racialized Nation, 1890-1900 14 A History of the American "Race" 17 War, Renewal, and the Problem of the "Smoked Yankee" 25. CHAPTER 2 Civic Nationalism and Its Contradictions, 1890-1917 44 "True Americanism" 47 Racial Dilemmas 59 The New Nationalism 65 CHAPTER 3 Hardening the Boundaries of the Nation, 1917-1929 81 War and Discipline 83 "Keeping Pure the Blood of America" 95 Civic Nationalism in the New Racial Regime 115 Aborting the New Nationalism 122 CHAPTER 4 The Rooseveltian Nation Ascendant, 1930-1940 128 A Kinder and Gentler Nation Builder 131 Radicalizing the Civic Nationalist Creed 139 Conservative Counterattack 156 The Survival of Racialized Nationalism 162 CHAPTER 5 Good War,Race War,1941-1945 187 The Good War 189 Race War 201 "Something Drastic Should Be Done" The Military's Hidden Race War 210 Combat and White Male Comradeship 220 CHAPTER 6 The Cold War, Anticommunism, and Nation in Flux, 1946-1960 238 War, Repression, and Nation Building 241 The Red Scare and the Decline of Racial Nationalism 246 Racial Nationalism Redux: The Case of Immigration Reform 256 CHAPTER 7 Civil Rights, White Resistance, and Black Nationalism, 1960-1968 268 Civil Rights and Civic Nationalism 270 "I Question America" The Crisis in Atlantic City 286 "Speaking as a Victim of This American System" 295 CHAPTER 8 Vietnam, Cultural Revolt, and the Collapse of the Rooseveltian Nation, 1968-1975 311 A Catastrophic War 313 The Spread of Anti-Americanism and the Revolt against Assimilation 327 The Collapse of the Rooseveltian Nation 342 EPILOGUE Beyond the Rooseveltian Nation, 1975-2000 347 Varieties of Multiculturalism 349 "A Springtime of Hope" Ronald Reagan and the Nationalist Renaissance 357 Reviving the Liberal Nation 365 Notes 375 Index 439