Making of Modern America

Gary A. Donaldson is the Keller Foundation in American History at Xavier University of Louisiana. His other books include The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon and the Election of 1960; Liberalism’s Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964; Truman Defeats Dewey; and America at War since 1945, among others. He lives in Mandeville, Louisiana.

“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.”

• PrefaceChapter 1: Postwar AdjustmentsChapter 2: The Early Cold WarChapter 3: Affluence and Anxiety: America in the 1950sChapter 4: The Eisenhower PresidencyChapter 5: Kennedy at Home and AbroadChapter 6: “We Shall Continue”Chapter 7: The Nation in the 1960sChapter 8: Out of the 1960s and into the 1970s: The Agony of ChangeChapter 9: America in the 1970s: The Post-Watergate YearsChapter 10: The Reagan YearsChapter 11: The Kinder, Gentler Conservatism of George H. W. BushChapter 12: Bill Clinton’s AmericaChapter 13: America after the New MillenniumChapter 14: The Second Bush and Obama: From the War on Terrorism to the Audacity of HopeSelected BibliographyIndexAbout the Author