Major Problems in American History Since 1945

by Robert W. Griffith, Paula Baker

Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems in American History series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. This reader serves as the primary anthology for the Post-1945 U.S. History course, Comprehensive topical coverage includes the Cold War; the cultural and political movements of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s; Vietnam; the return of conservatism; globalization; life in the new information age; the post-Cold War era; and race and ethnicity. The Fourth Edition extends its consideration of the period since the 1960s by adding two entirely new chapters and substantially reconfiguring others. In this way, this edition devotes far more attention to the 1970s, a period that has received especially notable scholarly scrutiny in the last few years, and to the period since the end of the Cold War. Key pedagogical elements of the Major Problems format have been chapter introductions, headnotes, and suggested readings.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Political Science, School

592 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is kind of sick how much I love reading about this time period.

[Cade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Your standard Major Problems book. Good selection of historically-relevant documents and recent essays. Lots of good stuff on second-wave feminism and the early LGBT movement that I hadn't read before.

[Cyndi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is divided into section dealing with the Cold War, Emergence of mass consumption, Kennedy, Civil Rights, The Great Society, Radicalism, Women's Liberation, Vietnam, the conservative movement and more. This is done through articles written mostly during the time period being examined and through actual speeches and documents that most Americans have heard of or know parts of but never read in its entirety. Those were fascinating to me and I learned so much about this time period. There were entirely too many holes in my knowledge of how our present-day economy, politics, deficit, foreign policy developed. Unfortunately I have no answers as to how to get us out of our predicament but do understand how we arrived here. Read for school and it was an awesome quarter.

[Leila-Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my main textbook for American History. Overall, I really got a lot out of it. It's definitely important to have some supplementary materials as the primary source documents and point-of-view essays can only give you so much if you don't have a basic understanding of the subjects being discussed. I thought it was great though and am glad my professor chose it!

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating. Letters from major world leders concerning various events in their lifetimes, the turnaround of American perspective against the USSR after having been allied to them in WWII, the fear of the Atom bobm. The Cold War from those who dictated it.

[Natasha Ortiz]

For my History 416B Class