Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Radicals in America
  • Cited by 13
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
August 2015
Print publication year:
2015
Online ISBN:
9781139027700
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139027700
Subjects:
Area Studies, American History after 1945, American Studies, American Government, Politics and Policy, Regional and World History: General Interest, History, Politics and International Relations
Series:
Cambridge Essential Histories
Information

Book description

Radicals in America is a masterful history of controversial dissenters who pursued greater equality, freedom and democracy - and transformed the nation. Written with clarity and verve, Radicals in America shows how radical leftists, while often marginal or ostracized, could assume a catalytic role as effective organizers in mass movements, fostering the imagination of alternative futures. Beginning with the Second World War, Radicals in America extends all the way down to the present, making it the first comprehensive history of radicalism to reach beyond the sixties. From the Communist Party and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, its coverage extends to the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street. Each chapter begins with a particular life story, including a Harlem woman deported in the McCarthy era, a gay Japanese-American opponent of the Vietnam War, and a Native American environmentalist, vignettes that bring to life the personal within the political.

Reviews

'The true history of radicalism over the past fifty years is often lost and never found, or distorted, smeared, or colored by old sectarian feuds. Brick and Phelps have connected the past to the present in ways that are accessible, understandable, and without grudge or judgment. An excellent work.'

Tom Hayden - author and politician

'This is a remarkable book, undoubtedly the most comprehensive and synthetic history of the post-World War II American left we have or are likely to get at any time in the near future.'

Nelson Lichtenstein - author of State of the Union

'In a time of ever-expanding inequalities and hard-hearted policies, Radicals in America helps preserve the visionary yeast for a better America. This fascinating book gives us a thorough, succinct, and clear-headed history of America’s ongoing radical hopes.'

Timothy B. Tyson - author of Blood Done Sign My Name

'With vigorous narrative and analytic rigor, this inspiring and clear-eyed account of American radicalism brings women’s activism and feminist politics from margin to center, beautifully exploring how different radical movements learned from and built on one another.'

Johanna Brenner - author of Women and the Politics of Class

'Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps have produced a wealth of knowledge on the American left, dissecting its history in the last seven decades. There is no other work on the American left so sweeping and comprehensive in its coverage of the radical tradition deeply rooted in the fabric of America. Radicals in America is a must-read for anyone interested in American history and its diverse politics.'

Aldon D. Morris - author of Origins of the Civil Rights Movement

'Something magical happened when Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps joined forces to craft this enthralling account of the US left from its upsurge after World War II to the near present. The two activist scholars, noted for distinguished books of their own, orchestrate stunning erudition, rigorous argumentation, lucid language, and a cohesive narrative to address a serious and taxing topic. Radicals in America is a learned volume, unsurpassed for a supreme command of the facts, yet is also a political breakthrough in the battle over memory of the postwar left. Exemplifying what Walter Benjamin meant when he referred to 'the past charged with the time of now', this account does not merely tell the old story of the left in new clothes. Its pages embody the spirit of resistance come back from the dead to redress injustice.'

Alan Wald Source: Against the Current

'The telling is nonjudgmental, the stories inspirational.'

Source: Left Lion

'The protagonist of [Brick and Phelps'] history is the radical … whose critical spirit and willingness to challenge the system - even at the risk of being scorned, fired, spat upon, beaten, jailed, or possibly killed - succeeds decade after decade in inspiring new mass movements implicitly aiming for another sort of society with greater freedom, equality, democracy, and solidarity … Highly readable and fast-paced.'

Dan LaBotz Source: New Politics

'In Radicals in America: The U.S. Left since the Second World War Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps suggest that the story of American radicalism is best understood as a dialectic between 'the willingness to hold fast for a minority view and the struggle to imagine and help fashion a new majority'. Tilting too far towards either pole leads to impotence and failure, but at their best leftists have managed to hold both commitments in a dynamic tension. The book, which appears as part of a series aimed at undergraduates, could be profitably assigned to those with no prior knowledge of the American left. But its analytic bite and well-chosen illustrations recommend it to seasoned students.'

Tim Barker Source: Dissent

'Excellent … A powerful history of how the Left has both succeeded and failed to bring its views into the center of American political life.'

Andrew Hartman Source: Jacobin

'Radicals in America is a generous overview, well-written and rich with detail, offering readers a lively way to grasp a subject that has often seemed more discontinuous and elusive than understandable.'

Paul Buhle Source: Tikkun

'The book is admirable for its engaging structure, its inclusive and evenhanded coverage, and the novel insights it offers on the Left’s potential to shape society.'

Andrew Cornell Source: The Journal of American History

'One of the great strengths of this impressive book is the texture it brings to the world of the left, going well beyond the organizations that made headlines and the familiar characters of movement politics … What comes through [from Brick and Phelps] is their appreciation of the breadth of vision and the moral courage of the people they chronicle.'

Kimberly Phillips-Fein Source: The Sixties

‘Brick and Phelps have written an indispensable synthesis of the history of the American left that is neither sentimental nor celebratory. Its most important achievement is the recovery of the voices of those often footnoted or simply ignored in the narratives of the mainstream labour and civil rights movements. The American left has indeed been more diverse, more complex, more voluble, and more persistent than is often portrayed, particularly in the post-1960s period.’

Michael Dennis Source: Labour/Le Travail

‘An ambitious, yet successful, systematization of the whole history of American radicalism from 1945 to the present, as well as a fruitful attempt to distill its gist. Radicals in America is the kind of herculean job that only two consummate experts in the field, such as historians Brick and Phelps, could have achieved.’

Luca Falciola Source: International Labor and Working-Class History

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents
References
Bibliography
Bell, Daniel. Marxian Socialism in the United States.Ithaca, NY, 1996 Google Scholar.
Buhle, Mari Jo, Buhle, Paul, and Georgakas, Dan, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Left, 2nd ed. New York, 1998 Google Scholar.
Cobble, Dorothy Sue. The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Rights and Social Rights in Modern America. Princeton, NJ, 2004 Google Scholar.
D'Emilio, John. Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. Chicago, IL, 2003 Google Scholar.
D'Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970. Chicago, IL, 1983 Google Scholar.
Gore, Dayo F., Theoharis, Jeanne, and Woodard, Komozi, eds. Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle. New York, 2009 Google Scholar.
Danielson, Leila. American Gandhi: A. J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century. Philadelphia, 2014 Google Scholar.
Isserman, Maurice. The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington.New York, 2000 Google Scholar.
Kazin, Michael. American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.New York, 2011 Google Scholar.
McCarthy, Timothy Patrick, and McMillian, John, eds. The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition.New York, 2003 Google Scholar.
Wolf, Sherry. Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation. Chicago, IL, 2009 Google Scholar.
Zaretsky, Eli. Why America Needs a Left: A Historical Argument. Cambridge, 2012 Google Scholar.
Cochran, Bert. Labor and Communism: The Conflict That Shaped American Unions. Princeton, NJ, 1977 Google Scholar.
Dellinger, David. From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter.New York, 1993 Google Scholar.
Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. London, 1996 Google Scholar.
Duberman, Martin Bauml. Paul Robeson: A Biography.New York, 1988 Google Scholar.
Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950.New York, 2008 Google Scholar.
Horowitz, Daniel. Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique. Amherst, MA, 1998 Google Scholar.
Isserman, Maurice. Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War. Middletown, CT, 1982 Google Scholar.
Klehr, Harvey. The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade. New York, 1984 Google Scholar.
Klein, Jennifer. For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State. Princeton, NJ, 2003 Google Scholar.
Lichtenstein, Nelson. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor. Urbana, IL, 1995 Google Scholar.
Lipsitz, George. A Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s. Urbana, IL, 1994 Google Scholar.
Markowitz, Norman D.The Rise and Fall of the People's Century: Henry Agard Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941–1948. New York, 1973 Google Scholar.
Sumner, Gregory. Dwight Macdonald and the politics Circle. Ithaca, NY, 1996 Google Scholar.
Wald, Alan M.The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. Chapel Hill, NC, 1987 Google Scholar.
Wald, Alan M.. Trinity of Passion: The Literary Left and the Anti-Fascist Crusade. Chapel Hill, NC, 2007 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Weigand, Kate. Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation. Baltimore, MD, 2001 Google Scholar.
Biondi, Martha. To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City.Cambridge, MA, 2003 Google Scholar.
Drucker, Peter. Max Shachtman and His Left: A Socialist's Odyssey through the “American Century.”Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1994 Google Scholar.
Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America.New York, 1991 Google Scholar.
Friedman, Andrea. Citizenship in Cold War America: The National Security State and the Possibilities of Dissent. Amherst, MA, 2014 Google Scholar.
Haynes, John Earl, and Klehr, Harvey. Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials That Shaped American Politics. New York, 2006 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Isserman, Maurice. If I Had a Hammer…: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left. New York, 1987 Google Scholar.
Lieberman, Robbie. The Strangest Dream: Communism, Anticommunism, and the U.S. Peace Movement, 1945–1963. Syracuse, NY, 2000 Google Scholar.
Meyerowitz, Joanne. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960.Philadelphia, 1994 Google Scholar.
Mollin, Marian. Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest. Philadelphia, 2006 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Morris, Aldon. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York, 1987 Google Scholar.
Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill, NC, 2003 Google Scholar.
Ransby, Barbara. Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson. New Haven, CT, 2013 Google Scholar.
Rosengarten, Frank. Urbane Revolutionary: C. L. R. James and the Struggle for a New Society.Jackson, MS, 2008 Google Scholar.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston, 1998 Google Scholar.
Smith, Richard Cándida. Utopia and Dissent: Art, Poetry, and Politics in California.Berkeley, CA, 1995 Google Scholar.
Starobin, Joseph R.American Communism in Crisis, 1943–1957. Cambridge, MA, 1972 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Storrs, Landon R. Y.The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left.Princeton, NJ, 2013 Google Scholar.
Sugrue, Thomas. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York, 2008 Google Scholar.
Wald, Alan M.American Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War. Chapel Hill, NC, 2012 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Washington, Mary Helen. The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s. New York, 2014 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Wittner, Lawrence S.Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970. Stanford, CA, 1997 Google Scholar.
Arsenault, Raymond. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. New York, 2006 Google Scholar.
Barber, David. A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed.Jackson, MS, 2008 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s.Cambridge, MA, 1981 Google Scholar.
Cohen, Robert. Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s.Oxford, 2009 Google Scholar.
Frost, Jennifer. An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s. New York, 2001 Google Scholar.
Gaines, Kevin. American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era.Chapel Hill, NC, 2006 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York, 1987 Google Scholar.
Gosse, Van. Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America, and the Making of a New Left. London, 1993 Google Scholar.
Kelley, Robin D. G.Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston, 2002 Google Scholar.
Le Blanc, Paul, and Yates, Michael D.. A Freedom Budget for All Americans: Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in the Struggle for Economic Justice Today. New York, 2013 Google Scholar.
Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. New York, 2011 Google Scholar.
Miller, James. “Democracy Is in the Streets”: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. New York, 1987 Google Scholar.
Payne, Charles M.I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley, CA, 1995 Google Scholar.
Rossinow, Doug. The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America. New York, 1998 Google Scholar.
Sale, Kirkpatrick. SDS. New York, 1973 Google Scholar.
Swerdlow, Amy. Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s. Chicago, 1993 Google Scholar.
Tyson, Timothy. Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power. Chapel Hill, NC, 1999 Google Scholar.
Bardacke, Frank. Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. London, 2011 Google Scholar.
Braunstein, Peter, and Doyle, Michael William, eds. Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. New York, 2002 Google Scholar.
Burrough, Bryan. Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence. New York: Penguin, 2015 Google Scholar.
Carmichael, Stokely, with Thelwell, Ekwueme Michael, Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York, 2003 Google Scholar.
Countryman, Matthew J.Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia.Philadelphia, 2006 Google Scholar.
Duberman, Martin. Stonewall. New York, 1993 Google Scholar.
Echols, Alice. Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975. Minneapolis, MN, 1989 Google Scholar.
Evans, Sara. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. 1980 Google Scholar | PubMed.
Fraser, Ronald, et al. 1968: A Student Generation in Revolt.New York, 1988 Google Scholar.
Jay, Karla. Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation. New York, 1999 Google Scholar.
Joseph, Peniel. Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America.New York, 2006 Google Scholar.
Kornbluh, Felicia. The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America.Philadelphia, 2007 Google Scholar.
Maeda, Daryl. The Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America. Minneapolis, MN, 2009 Google Scholar.
Moraga, Cherrie, and Anzaldúa, Gloria, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.Watertown, MA, 1981 Google Scholar.
Moser, Richard R.The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era.New Brunswick, NJ, 1996 Google Scholar.
Muñoz, Carlos. Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement.London, 1989 Google Scholar.
O'Reilly, Kenneth. “Racial Matters”: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972. New York, 1989 Google Scholar.
Smith, Paul Chaat, and Warrior, Robert Allen. Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee. New York, 1996 Google Scholar.
Varon, Jeremy. Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies. Berkeley, CA, 2004 Google Scholar.
Wells, Tom. The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam. Berkeley, CA, 1994 Google Scholar.
Berger, Dan, ed. The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism. New Brunswick, NJ, 2010 Google Scholar.
Breines, Winifred. The Trouble Between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement. New York, 2006 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Brenner, Aaron, Brenner, Robert, and Winslow, Cal, eds. Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below during the Long 1970s. London, 2010 Google Scholar.
Brown, Elaine. A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story. New York, 1992 Google Scholar.
Elbaum, Max. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. New York, 2002 Google Scholar.
Epstein, Barbara. Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s. Berkeley, CA, 1991 Google Scholar.
Gottlieb, Robert. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement, rev. ed. Washington, D.C., 2005 Google Scholar.
Rosen, Ruth. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America. New York, 2000 Google Scholar.
Shilts, Randy. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. New York, 1982 Google Scholar.
Springer, Kimberly. Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968–1980. Durham, NC, 2005 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Thompson, Heather. Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in an American City. Ithaca, NY, 2001 Google Scholar.
Woodard, Komozi. A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics. Chapel Hill, NC, 1999 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Brenner, Johanna. Women and the Politics of Class.New York, 2000 Google Scholar.
Brisbin, Richard A., Jr. A Strike Like No Other Strike: Law and Resistance during the Pittston Coal Strike of 1989–1990. Baltimore, MD, 2002 Google Scholar.
Bronstein, Carolyn. Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, 1976–1986. New York, 2011 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Chase, Steve, ed. Defending the Earth: A Dialogue between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman. Montreal, 1991 Google Scholar.
Duggan, Lisa, and Hunter, Nan D., eds. Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture. New York, 1995 Google Scholar.
Foley, Michael Stewart. Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s. New York, 2013 Google Scholar.
Manes, Christopher. Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization. Boston, 1990 Google Scholar.
Merchant, Carolyn. Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World. New York, 1992 Google Scholar.
Moody, Kim. An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. London, 1988 Google Scholar.
Reed, Adolph. The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon. New Haven, CT, 1986 Google Scholar.
Smith, Christian. Resisting Reagan: The U.S. Central America Peace Movement.Chicago, 1996 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Wittner, Lawrence S.Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present. Stanford, CA, 2003 Google Scholar.
Arias, Arturo, ed. The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy. Minneapolis, MN, 2001 Google Scholar.
Danaher, Kevin, ed. 50 Years Is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Boston, 1994 Google Scholar.
Ewen, Alexander, ed. Voice of Indigenous Peoples: Native People Address the United Nations: With the United Nations Draft Declaration of Indigenous Peoples Rights.Santa Fe, NM, 1994 Google Scholar.
Heaney, Michael T., and Rojas, Fabio. Party in the Street: The Antiwar Movement and the Democratic Party after 9/11. New York, 2015 CrossRef | Google Scholar.
Klein, Naomi. Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. New York, 2002 Google Scholar.
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate. New York, 2014 Google Scholar.
Kunkel, Benjamin. Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis. London, 2014 Google Scholar.
Martin, Justin. Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon. Cambridge, MA, 2002 Google Scholar.
Mertes, Tom, ed. A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible?London, 2004 Google Scholar.
Ramírez, Gloria Muñoz. The Fire and the Word: A History of the Zapatista Movement. San Francisco, CA, 2008 Google Scholar.
Shepard, Benjamin, and Hayduk, Ronald, eds. From ACT-UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization. London, 2002 Google Scholar.
Taylor, Astra, et al. Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America.London, 2011 Google Scholar.
Writers for the 99%. Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action That Changed America.Chicago, IL, 2011 Google Scholar.
Yuen, Eddie, Rose, Daniel Burton, and Katsiaficas, George, eds. The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to Capitalist Globalization. New York, 2001 Google Scholar.

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.