In 1958, facing court-ordered integration, Virginia's governor closed public schools in three cities. His action provoked not only the NAACP but also large numbers of white middle-class Virginians who organized to protest school closings. This compilation of essays explores this contentious period in the state's history. Contributors argue that the moderate revolt against conservative resistance to integration reshaped the balance of power in the state but also delayed substantial school desegregation. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Latin American democracies of the sixties and seventies, most theories hold, collapsed because they had become incompatible with the structural requirements of capitalist development. In this groundbreaking application of game theory to political phenomena, Youssef Cohen argues that structural conditions in Latin American countries did not necessarily preclude the implementation of social and economic reforms within a democratic framework. Focusing on the experiences of Chile and Brazil, Cohen argues that what thwarted democratic reforms in Latin America was a classic case of prisoner's dilemma. Moderates on the left and the right knew the benefits of coming to a mutual agreement on socio-economic reforms. Yet each feared that, if it cooperated, the other side could gain by colluding with the radicals. Unwilling to take this risk, moderate groups in both countries splintered and joined the extremists. The resulting disorder opened the way for military control. Cohen further argues that, in general, structural explanations of political phenomena are inherently flawed; they incorrectly assume that beliefs, preferences, and actions are caused by social, political, and economic structures. One cannot explain political outcomes, Cohen argues, without treating beliefs and preferences as partly independent from structures, and as having a causal force in their own right.

What does Walter Mondale's career reveal about the dilemma of the modern Democtratic party and the crisis of postwar American liberalism? Steven M. Gillon 's answer is that Mondale's frustration as Jimmy Carter's vice president and his failure to unseat the immensely popular President Reagan in 1984 reveal the beleaguered state of a party torn apart by generational and ideological disputes. The Democrats' Dilemma begins with Mondale's early career in Minnesota politics, from his involvement with Hubert Humphrey to his election to the United States Senate in 1964. Like many liberals of his generation, Mondale traveled to Washington hopeful that government power could correct social wrongs. By 1968, urban unrest, a potent white backlash, and America's involvement in the Vietnam war dimmed much of his optimisim. In the years after 1972, as senator, as vice president, and as presidential candidate, Mondale self-conciously attempted to fill the void after the death of Robert Kennedy. Mondale attempted to create a new Democratic party by finding common ground between the party's competeing factions. Gillon contends that Mondale's failure to create that consensus underscored the deep divisions within the Democratic Party. Using previously classified documents, unpublished private papers, and dozens of interviews -including extensive conversations with Mondale himself- Gillon paints a vivid portrait of the innerworkings of the Carter administration. The Democrats' Dilemma captures Mondale's frustration as he attempted to mediate between the demands of liberals intent upon increased spending for social programs and the fiscal conservatism of a president unskilled in the art of congressional diplomacy. Gillon discloses the secret revelation that Mondale nearly resigned as vice president. Gillon also chronicles Mondale's sometimes stormy relationships with Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, and Geraldine Ferraro. Eminently readable and a means of access to a major twentieth-century political figure, The Democrats' Dilemma is a fascinating look at the travail of American liberalism.

This volume explores the response of liberals to rightwing attacks during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, establishing it as a defensive approach aimed at warding off efforts to conflate liberalism with communism, but not at striking back at the opposing ideology of conservatism itself. This book finds the combination of the liberal adherence to pragmatism and political pluralism to have been responsible for the weakness of this response. Analyzing the language used in interchanges between rightwing anticommunists and liberals, Michaels shows that those interchanges did not constitute an effort to persuade but rather an effort to discredit the opponent as "un-American." A variety of conflicts—a professor seeking to avoid dismissal by accusing his colleagues of disloyalty, an investigator of rightwing groups assailed for his activities, an openly communist student seeking to justify the existence of his student organization—embody a battle waged over conflicting versions of "America," an attempt by each side to lay exclusive claim to that word. Conflicts over freedom, individualism, Americanism, and the institution of private property demonstrate how rightwing anticommunists and moderate liberals actually subscribed to two mutually incompatible patterns of sociation, making the conflict profound and resistant to reconciliation.