Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation
    Unavailable
    American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation
    Unavailable
    American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation
    Ebook570 pages7 hours

    American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation

    By Michael Kazin

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NEWSWEEK/THE DAILY BEAST, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE PROGRESSIVE

    The definitive history of the reformers, radicals, and idealists who fought for a different America, from the abolitionists to Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky.
     
    While the history of the left is a long story of idealism and determination, it has also been a story of movements that failed to gain support from mainstream America. In American Dreamers, Michael Kazin—one of the most respected historians of the American left working today—tells a new history of the movements that, while not fully succeeding on their own terms, nonetheless made lasting contributions to American society. Among these culture shaping events are the fight for equal opportunity for women, racial minorities, and homosexuals; the celebration of sexual pleasure; the inclusion of multiculturalism in the media and school curricula; and the creation of books and films with altruistic and anti-authoritarian messages. Deeply informed, judicious and impassioned, and superbly written, this is an essential book for our times and for anyone seeking to understand our political history and the people who made it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateAug 23, 2011
    ISBN9780307596703
    Unavailable
    American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation
    Author

    Michael Kazin

    Michael Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown University and editor of Dissent. He is the award-winning author of War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918; American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation; A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan; America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (with Maurice Isserman); The Populist Persuasion: An American History; and Barons of Labor. In addition, he is editor-in-chief of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, co-editor of the anthology Americanism, and editor of In Search of Progressive America. Kazin has contributed to The Washington Post, The Nation, Democracy, The New York Times Book Review, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications and websites. He lives in Washington, DC, and is married to Beth Horowitz. They have two grown children.

    Read more from Michael Kazin

    Related to American Dreamers

    Related ebooks

    Political Ideologies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Last WASP President

      Dec 2, 2018

      The Last WASP President
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Sep 1, 2020

      Letters
      5 min read

    • Article

      Freedom of Thought

      Mar 4, 2019

      Oxford University Press, 220 pp., $18.95 REAL PRESIDENTS READ BOOKS. When the Library of Congress was destroyed in the War of 1812, the former president Thomas Jefferson offered his collection to replace it, commenting that “I do not know that it co

      4 min read

    • Article

      Why We Write

      Feb 14, 2018

      STEPHANIE STOKES OLIVER has spent her career in magazine and book publishing. Formerly the fashion and beauty merchandising editor at Glamour, founding editor in chief of Heart & Soul, and editor in chief of Essence.com, she most recently served as v

      7 min read

    • Article

      Pioneers Of Pride

      Jun 18, 2020

      Pioneers Of Pride
      11 min read

    • Article

      Why We Write

      Feb 7, 2018

      STEPHANIE STOKES OLIVER has spent her career in magazine and book publishing. Formerly the fashion and beauty merchandising editor at Glamour, founding editor in chief of Heart & Soul, and editor in chief of Essence.com, she most recently served as v

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of TIME

      Nov 5, 2018

      IN HIS 2015 BOOK, THE ARTIST JR ASKS, “CAN Art Change the World?” Artists see beyond walls, across divides, around corners. Through their eyes, we understand the world in new, clearer ways—which is why TIME since its founding has worked with great ar

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Klansman’s Horrific Reign

      Aug 15, 2023

      A Klansman’s Horrific Reign
      12 min read

    • Article

      Charlottesville, Brexit, and Trump: From News Cycle To Novel

      Aug 10, 2018

      On the morning of Sunday, August 12th, 2017, around 500 white supremacists began to assemble in Emancipation Park, Charlottesville, Virginia for the Unite the Right rally. The group, which included armed militias, Klansmen and members of the alt-righ

      5 min read

    • Article

      My Father’s Voice

      Dec 1, 2021

      My Father’s Voice
      13 min read

    • Article

      Why This New Book Will Pass Unnoticed

      Mar 28, 2024

      ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AND widely-read opinion columnists in the Western world is never published in mainstream outlets. Despite being read by major commentators and politicians, he is almost never named, let alone discussed. Steve Sailer, a 65-

      6 min read

    • Article

      Lost Souls

      May 1, 2018

      Lost Souls
      4 min read

    • Article

      From the Editor

      Jul 29, 2019

      From the Editor
      5 min read

    • Article

      Your Bookshelf May Be Part Of The Problem

      Jun 6, 2020

      Anti-racist reading lists are making the rounds right now — and they can be useful if people do the work of reading. But critic Juan Vidal suggests you look closer to home, to your own bookshelf.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Literary Deaths of 2022

      Dec 29, 2022

      In 2022, we mourned the deaths of many literary giants who remained under-celebrated in their lifetimes. These are some of them. With his eye patch and no-bullshit demeanor, Andrew Vachss was a man on a mission. He was an author of hard-boiled fictio

      13 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Ismail Muhammad

      Dec 10, 2017

      For me, 2017 was the year that journalism nearly supplanted fiction as my reading life’s dominant genre. I started the year in a state of alarm at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Shortly after he took office, I resolved to be a good, engaged citizen aft

      5 min read

    • Article

      Writing Queer

      Dec 27, 2018

      Ididn’t know it, but I was mentally ill until about age 16. Anybody queer was considered “mentally ill” until 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association removed the diagnosis of homosexuality as a disorder (though “sexual orientation disturbance

      8 min read

    Reviews for American Dreamers

    3.5/5

    12 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Contrary to the hysterical rhetoric of many conservatives, the United States is unique among Western nations in the absence of a truly viable left-wing political movement. Unlike in the nations of Europe, radical and socialist parties have never succeeded in establishing more than a temporary foothold in American politics. Yet as Michael Kazin notes, their failure to establish an enduring political presence stands in stark contrast to their success in shaping the moral culture of American society. This contrast forms the core of his new, book, a survey of the American left from the early 19th century to the present day. In it, he chronicles both the battles lost by the left in American politics and the broader wars they won to change the values and attitudes of the nation over the past two centuries.

      Kazin begins in the 1820s with the emergence of the first social movements dedicated to the moral transformation of the country. These groups pioneered the basic approach that would be followed by their successors: charters establishing their goals, the use of street protests to demonstrate their commitment, and the exploitation of media to broadcast their message. Though such groups pursued a range of goals, Kazin focuses on those which campaigned for the abolition of slavery and the rights of women. These movements challenged not just the legal shackles binding these groups but the prejudices underlying them as well. While the campaign for women’s rights stalled, the cause of abolitionism grew in popularity with the outbreak of the Civil War, turning “anti-slavery firebrands into respectable figures.” (pg. 49) Motivated by the moral arguments of abolitionists, Northern politicians turned the Civil War into a war for freedom, eventually bringing about the emancipation of the slaves.

      Emancipation did nothing to bring about racial equality, though. Here Kazin develops another theme persistent in the history of the American left: the role of racism played in fragmenting their political efforts. Nowhere was this more evident than in the burgeoning labor movement in the nineteenth century. With the concentration of wealth becoming a pressing issue in post-Civil War America, workers sought to band together to demand more equitable treatment. Yet for all the efforts of a few activists, workers usually remained divided along racial and ethnic lines, frustrating attempts at unity. Racism also plagued the formation of a successful socialist movement in the late 19th century, with organizers forced to bow to racist attitudes in their efforts to win over working-class Americans to their cause. Kazin’s examination of socialism in America is one of the strengths of the book, as he identifies three different, yet concurrent, socialist movements that existed in the country at the turn of the century: that of midwestern workers and farmers, that of secular Jewish immigrants from Europe, and that of a “modernist left” of the bohemian communities of major cities in the northeast and midwest. In the end, though, none of these succeeded in creating a viable political movement, and collapsed amid the “Red Scare” at the end of World War I.

      The political left reemerged in the 1930s amid the economic collapse of the Great Depression. Socialism had been replaced by Marxism, with a Communist Party trading obedience to the Soviet Union for financial support. With the widespread suffering of the 1930s, thousands flocked to the Communists searching for a better way, and while the party remained small, Kazin notes the disproportionate cultural influence they exerted through this period in a variety of arenas and credits them with reintroducing the issue of racial equality into the political scene. Though the Communist Party ultimately failed to establish itself more broadly, the issue of equal rights for African Americans survived the party’s collapse, taking hold as a key issue of the New Left that emerged in the 1950s. Kazin details the massive shift the New Left effected in the attitudes of most Americans towards women and minorities, yet the triumph of equality overshadowed a failure to establish an enduring radical movement in the country, a failure which impeded prospects for further change as the 20th century came to an end.

      Kazin’s book is an insightful study of the history of American radicals and their impact upon the nation. In an age of historical specialization, his effort to provide an encompassing overview provides a useful account of how the left evolved over the course of American history, particularly in response to the larger social and economic forces shaping the nation’s development. Some may quibble with particular aspects of his analysis, but the overall narrative he provides is insightful and convincing. With its accessible prose and helpful bibliography at the end, this is a superb book that should be read by anyone seeking to better understand the often derided or overlooked role the left has played in shaping America into the country in which we live today.