Starting with the premise that it is possible to say something significantly new about the 1960s and the New Left, the contributors to this volume trace the social roots, the various paths, and the legacies of the movement that set out to change America. As members of a younger generation of scholars, none of them (apart from Paul Buhle) has first-hand knowledge of the era. Their perspective as non-participants enables them to offer fresh interpretations of the regional and ideological differences that have been obscured in the standard histories and memoirs of the period. Reflecting the diversity of goals, the clashes of opinions, and the tumult of the time, these essays will engage seasoned scholars as well as students of the '60s.

Starting with the premise that it is possible to say something significantly new about the 1960s and the New Left, the contributors to this volume trace the social roots, the various paths, and the legacies of the movement that set out to change America. As members of a younger generation of scholars, none of them (apart from Paul Buhle) has first-hand knowledge of the era. Their perspective as non-participants enables them to offer fresh interpretations of the regional and ideological differences that have been obscured in the standard histories and memoirs of the period. Reflecting the diversity of goals, the clashes of opinions, and the tumult of the time, these essays will engage seasoned scholars as well as students of the '60s. Author note: John McMillian teaches History and Literature at Harvard University and is co-editor with Timothy Patrick McCarthy, of The Radical Reader: A Documentary Anthology of American Radical History (forthcoming).Paul Buhle is Lecturer in the American civilization department at Brown University. His most recent book (co-authored with Dave Wagner) is Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies. He writes for The Nation, The Guardian, and The Times Higher Education Supplement, among other publications.

Gosse, one of the foremost historians of the American postwar left, has crafted an engaging and concise synthetic history of the varied movements and organizations that have been placed under the broad umbrella known as the New Left. As one reader notes, gosse 'has accomplished something difficult and rare, if not altogether unique, in providing a studied and moving account of the full array of protest movements - from civil rights and Black Power, to student and antiwar protest, to women's and gay liberation, to Native American, Asian American, and Puerto Rican activism - that defined the American sixties as an era of powerfully transformative rebellions...His is a 'big-tent' view that shows just how rich and varied 1960s protest was.' In contrast to most other accounts of this subject, the SDS and white male radicals are taken out of the center of the story and placed more toward its margins. A prestigious project from a highly respected historian, The New Left in the United States, 1955-1975 will be a must-read for anyone interested in American politics of the postwar era.

A new progressive generation is on the rise in the United States, reflected in the mushrooming rolls of the Democratic Socialists of America (90,000 mostly twentysomething members), Marxist explainers in Teen Vogue, and perhaps most famously of all, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Rise of a New Left is the first book to look closely at this new politics. Propelled by interviews with AOC and the other key figures and organizations who have shaken up American politics, the book includes portraits of groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, the Sunrise Movement, and Justice Democrats, explaining who they are, where they come from, and what they want. Investigating the panoply of strategies employed by the new movements and their relationship to politicians from Bernie Sanders to Nancy Pelosi, the book describes how the generational focus on insurgent electoral campaigns both aims to transform the Democratic Party and threatens to be captured by it. Written with panache by a member of this rising generation, this book immerses the reader in a youth culture the likes of which hasn't been seen since the Sixties.

The greatest contribution of the New Left of the 1960s was its determination to build a culture and politics of popular participation at every level of society. A radical conception of democracy, it inspired the movements for civil rights, for peace and solidarity, and for gender and sexual equality. It framed the social debate, in terms of community-centered democratic theory, which continues to guide and inspire well into the twenty-first century. As the contributors to this anthology revisit the 1960s to identify its ongoing impact on North American politics and culture, it becomes evident how this legacy has blended with and influenced today’s worldwide social movements, in particular, the anti-globalization movement and the Right to the City movement. The successes and failures of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as they struggle for a voice at global levels are examined, as are the new movements of the urban disenfranchised-the homeless, the alienated youth, the elderly poor. Apart from evoking memories of past peace and freedom struggles from those who worked on the social movements of the 1960s, this work also includes a number of essays from a rising generation of scholars, too young to have experienced the 1960s firsthand, whose perspective as non-participants enables them to offer fresh interpretations. Dimitrios Roussopoulos, a prominent New Left activist in the 1960s, continues to write and edit on major international issues while being a committed activist, testing theory with practice.

The Populist Movement was the largest mass movement for political and economic change in the history of the American South until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Populist Movement in this book is defined as the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party, as well as the Agricultural Wheel and Knights of Labor in the 1880s and 1890s. The Populists threatened the political hegemony of the white racist southern Democratic Party during populism's high point in the mid-1890s; and the populists threw the New South into a state of turmoil Populism in the South Revisited: New Interpretations and New Departures brings together nine of the best new works on the populist movement in the South that grapple with several larger themes—such as the nature of political insurgency, the relationship between African Americans and whites, electoral reform, new economic policies and producerism, and the relationship between rural and urban areas—in case studies that center on several states and at the local level. Each essay offers both new research and new interpretations into the causes, course, and consequences of the populist insurgency. One essay analyzes how notions of debt informed the Populist insurgency in North Carolina, the one state where the Populists achieved statewide power, while another analyzes the Populists' failed attempts in Grant Parish, Louisiana, to align with African Americans and Republicans to topple the incumbent Democrats. Other topics covered include populist grassroots organizing with African Americans to stop disfranchisement in North Carolina; the Knights of Labor and the relationship with populism in Georgia; organizing urban populism in Dallas, Texas; Tom Watson's relationship with Midwest Populism; the centrality of African Americans in populism, a comparative analysis of Populism across the Deep South, and how the rhetoric and ideology of populism impacted socialism and the Garvey movement in the early twentieth century. Together these studies offer new insights into the nature of southern populism and the legacy of the Peoples' Party in the South.

In February 2009, America celebrates the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, and the pace of new Lincoln books and articles has already quickened. From his cabinet’s politics to his own struggles with depression, Lincoln remains the most written-about story in our history. And each year historians find something new and important to say about the greatest of our Presidents. Lincoln Revisited is a masterly guidePub to what’s new and what’s noteworthy in this unfolding story—a brilliant gathering of fresh scholarship by the leading Lincoln historians of our time. Brought together by The Lincoln Forum, they tackle uncharted territory and emerging questions; they also take a new look at established debates—including those about their own landmark works. Here, these well-known historians revisit key chapters in Lincoln’s legacy—from Matthew Pinsker on Lincoln’s private life and Jean Baker on religion and the Lincoln marriage to Geoffrey Perret on Lincoln as leader and Frank J. Williams on Lincoln and civil liberties in wartime. The eighteen original essays explore every corner of Lincoln’s world—religion and politics, slavery and sovereignty, presidential leadership and the rule of law, the Second Inaugural Address and the assassination. In his 1947 classic, Lincoln Reconsidered, David Herbert Donald confronted the Lincoln myth. Today, the scholars in Lincoln Revisited give a new generation of students, scholars, and citizens the perspectives vital for understanding the constantly reinterpreted genius of Abraham Lincoln.