This study is an examination of public reaction to the Social Security Act of 1935 and its various provisions, and to the proposals for its extension, from its enactment to the fall of 1965. Lt is an examination of the way in which these provisions were understood, the degree to which they were accepted, and the underlying attitudes toward poverty that are presumed to be associated with them. The basic data analyzed in this study were obtained in nationwide public opinion surveys that have been taken by a variety of agencies since 1935, notably those conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion (the Gallup poll), Elmo Roper (principally for Fortune Magazine), the National Opinion Research Center (now affiliated with the University of Chicago), and the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan. This study was undertaken in the conviction that whatever information is available on these matters ought to be retrieved and assimilated, because inevitably it will improve our understanding of the process by which a free, competitive society can solve the paradox of poverty amid abundance.

Fifty years ago Harry S. Truman pulled off the greatest upset in U.S. political history. With his party split on both the left and the right, and facing a formidable Republican opponent in New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Missourian was thought to have little chance of remaining in the White House. But politics in the postwar years were changing dramatically. Truman and his advisers successfully read those changes: their strategy focused on building a coalition of organized labor, African Americans in large northern cities, and traditional liberals—and ignoring protests from the conservative South. Donaldson argues that Dewey did nearly as much to lose the election as Truman did to win it. Dewey entered the campaign so overconfident that he refused to confront Truman on the issues. The Republicans, certain of a mandate from the public after the midterm elections of 1946, prepared to disassemble the New Deal. Yet they suffered from even more severe internal division than the Democrats. The 1948 presidential campaign was a watershed event in the history of American politics. It encompassed Truman's rousing "Give 'em Hell Harry" speeches and intriguing behind-the-scenes political maneuvering. It was the first election after Roosevelt's death and the last before the advent of television. It marked the new political prominence of African American voters and organized labor, as well as the South's declining influence over the Democratic Party.

Twenty-four news networks, a plethora of newspapers and magazines, vibrant news-talk radio, and the ubiquitous Internet highlight our society as information-driven. With such a steady stream of hard facts mixed with publicised opinions, the mainstream population has an opinion on everything. Most anyone seems itching to argue their side of an issue, making once private beliefs fodder for general consumption. A staple of any medium's content is a regular public opinion poll on whatever hot topic strikes the editor's fancy. From the significant to the mundane, public opinion permeates society. Accordingly, politicians have taken note of these opinions and adopted stands and values that put them in tune with public sentiment. An understanding of the nature of public opinion, therefore, is paramount in today's world. This book assembles and presents a carefully chosen bibliography on public opinion in its many forms. The collection of references makes for a valuable resource in studying and researching the critical issue of public opinion. Easy access to these pieces of literature are then provided with author, title, and subject indexes.

Covering the intricate facets of America's most important democratic tradition, this book serves as an important resource to understand how citizens' views are translated into governmental action. Public Opinion and Polling around the World presents a thorough review of public opinion from its roots in colonial America to its role in today's emerging democracies. More than 100 entries prepared by top scholars examine the 200-year history of public opinion, measurement methodologies with an emphasis on telephone interviews and Internet polls, and key figures like George Gallup and Elmo Roper, who created their own polling systems. An analysis of theories compares schools of thought from the fields of psychology, sociology, and economics and explores how people form opinions. A fascinating snapshot of the public's current views on economic issues, foreign policy, gender, gay rights, and other hot-button topics observes patterns across genders, race, ethnic origins, class, and religion in regions all over the world. Students, academicians, and political observers will discover answers to such questions as, "does public opinion shape the behavior of government?"

Public opinion matters. It registers itself on the public consciousness, translates into politics and policy, and impels politicians to run for office and, once elected, to serve in particular ways.This is a book about opinion?not opinions. James Stimson takes the incremental, vacillating, time-trapped data points of public opinion surveys and transforms them into a conceptualization of public mood swings that can be measured and used to predict change, not just to describe it. To do so, he reaches far back in U.S. survey research and compiles the data in such a way as to allow the minutiae of attitudes toward abortion, gun control, and housing to dissolve into a portrait of national mood and change.Using sophisticated techniques of coding, statistics, and data equalization, the author has amassed an unrivaled database from which to extrapolate his findings. The results go a long way toward calibrating the folklore of political eras, and the cyclical patterns that emerge show not only the regulatory impulse of the 1960s and 1970s and the swing away from it in the 1980s; the cycles also show that we are in the midst of another major mood swing right now?what the author calls the ?unnoticed liberalism? of current American politics.Concise, suggestive, and eminently readable, Public Opinion in America is ideal for courses on public opinion, public policy, and methods, as well as for introductory courses in American government. Examples and illustrations abound, and appendixes document the measurement of policy mood from survey research marginals. This revised second edition includes updated data on public opinion and voters through the 1996 presidential election.

Ichiro Takayoshi's book argues that World War II transformed American literary culture. From the mid-1930s to the American entry into World War II in 1941, pre-eminent figures from Ernest Hemingway to Reinhold Neibuhr responded to the turn of the public's interest from the economic depression at home to the menace of totalitarian systems abroad by producing novels, short stories, plays, poems, and cultural criticism in which they prophesied the coming of a second world war and explored how America could prepare for it. The variety of competing answers offered a rich legacy of idioms, symbols, and standard arguments that were destined to license America's promotion of its values and interests around the world for the rest of the twentieth century. Ambitious in scope and addressing an enormous range of writers, thinkers, and artists, this book is the first to establish the outlines of American culture during this pivotal period.