American Left

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones is professor emeritus of American History at the University of Edinburgh. He took his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and has been a postdoctoral fellow and visiting professor at the Universities of Harvard and Toronto. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy and Peace Now! American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones is professor emeritus of American History at the University of Edinburgh. He took his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and has been a postdoctoral fellow and visiting professor at the Universities of Harvard and Toronto. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy and Peace Now! American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War.

To this refreshing, provocative volume, veteran historian Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones brings a lifetime’s knowledge and thought. In a sprightly assault on the conventional wisdom, he demonstrates with a wonderfully eclectic range of examples the effectiveness of the American left and its central role in the shaping of modern American life.

• 1. A Crisis in Progressive Confidence; 2. The Socialist Origins of Social Security; 3. Early Achievers on the American Left; 4. Socialists in Congress; 5. The Identification of America and its Fascist Enemy; 6. The New Deal’s Undeclared Socialism; 7. The Republican Re-invention of Socialism; 8. The New Left Shares the Credit; 9. The Newer Left; 10. The Republican Road to Nationalization; 11. Obama: A President for the Left?; Appendix: Defining the Left and Adjacent Terms; Abbreviations used in the Notes; Bibliography.