This is an introduction to the study of America since 1945--the period in which the US became a world power. Alternate chapters provide the historical background and illuminate themes through culture and the arts, grounding students in the facts before exploring more interpretive approaches. In this way, awareness of central currents in art, film, theater, intellectual history and media is developed alongside an understanding of political and social change.

This text introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essys on important topics in U.S. history. The book asks students to evaluate primary surces, test the interpretations and draw their own conclusions.

Growing Up America brings together new scholarship that considers the role of children and teenagers in shaping American political life during the decades following the Second World War. Growing Up America places young people-and their representations-at the center of key political trends, illuminating the dynamic and complex roles played by youth in the midcentury rights revolutions, in constructing and challenging cultural norms, and in navigating the vicissitudes of American foreign policy and diplomatic relations. The authors featured here reveal how young people have served as both political actors and subjects from the early Cold War through the late twentieth-century Age of Fracture. At the same time, Growing Up America contends that the politics of childhood and youth extends far beyond organized activism and the ballot box. By unveiling how science fairs, breakfast nooks, Boy Scout meetings, home economics classrooms, and correspondence functioned as political spaces, this anthology encourages a reassessment of the scope and nature of modern politics itself.

Encompassing political, social, and cultural issues, this primary source reader allows students to hear the voices of the past, giving a richer understanding of American society since 1945. Comprises over 50 documents, which incorporate political, social, and cultural history and encompass the viewpoints of ordinary people as well a variety of leaders An extended introduction explains to students how to think and work like historians by using primary sources Includes both written texts and photographs Headnotes contextualize the documents and questions encourage students to engage critically with the sources

A Companion to Post-1945 America is an original collectionof 34 essays by key scholars on the history and historiography ofPost-1945 America. Covers society and culture, people and movements, politics andforeign policy Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every importantera and topic Includes book review section on essential readings

Joselit traces and analyzes the diversity and complexity of postwar American art from Abstract Expressionism to the present clearly and succinctly in this groundbreaking survey. 183 illustrations.

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