Remedy and Reaction
Remedy and Reaction

Author: Paul Starr

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-06-04

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 0300206666

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In no other country has health care served as such a volatile flashpoint of ideological conflict. America has endured a century of rancorous debate on health insurance, and despite the passage of legislation in 2010, the battle is not yet over. This book is a history of how and why the United States became so stubbornly different in health care, presented by an expert with unsurpassed knowledge of the issues. Tracing health-care reform from its beginnings to its current uncertain prospects, Paul Starr argues that the United States ensnared itself in a trap through policies that satisfied enough of the public and so enriched the health-care industry as to make the system difficult to change. He reveals the inside story of the rise and fall of the Clinton health plan in the early 1990sùand of the Gingrich counterrevolution that followed. And he explains the curious tale of how Mitt RomneyÆs reforms in Massachusetts became a model for Democrats and then follows both the passage of those reforms under Obama and the explosive reaction they elicited from conservatives. Writing concisely and with an even hand, the author offers exactly what is needed as the debate continuesùa penetrating account of how health care became such treacherous terrain in American politics.

Reform and Reaction in Twentieth Century American Politics
Reform and Reaction in Twentieth Century American Politics

Author: John J. Broesamle

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1990-04-24

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13:

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This work provides an overview and analysis of the rise, development, decline, and end of liberal reform movements and their alternation with periods of reaction in the United States from the 1890s through the mid-1980s. Broesamle's volume reassesses the course of U.S. political history over the last century and presents a new theory of American politics that reinterprets the way the system actually produces change. He relates the life cycles of reform movements to the key social, economic, and cultural developments of their eras, investigates commonalities among movements, and assesses the extent to which each movement is individual. No other history of liberalism has propounded the same thesis. The work is ambitious in its intellectual breadth and inclusiveness, and exceptionally comprehensive in both design and execution. Reform and Reaction answers the questions: What is the exact nature of the reform-reaction rhythm? What gives rise to it? Is it truly cyclical? Does each crest and trough resemble its prior and succeeding counterpart, or are they distinct? If there is a resemblance, can these political transformations be expected to repeat themselves in the future? The answers to these questions will alter previous perceptions of the relationship between the political realm and society at large and especially with respect to such phenomena as upheavals of youth, the rise and decline of campaigns on behalf of workers and farmers, feminist movements, and changing moral standards. The study is divided into three major sections: Reform, Resistance, and Reaction, each of which is preceded by a short introductory essay that establishes its fundamental direction. By employing historical examples and resurveying the chronological territory chapter by chapter, the study details the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Kennedy-Johnson period of the 60s as well as the reactionary periods of the 1920s, the 1950s, and the 1970s and 1980s. Broesamle establishes links between political trends on one hand, and social and intellectual trends on the other, that have not been delineated before. Reform and Reaction in Twentieth Century American Politics has a wide appeal to a very broad audience: professors and teachers in the fields of twentieth century U.S. history and political science, practicing political professionals, journalists covering the American political scene, and any informed generalist interested in learning more about historical and contemporary politics in the U.S. The book would be an addition to the reading lists for graduate and upper division classes on virtually any aspect of American political history from the 1890s to the mid-1980s as well as courses on current political affairs.

American History: A Very Short Introduction
American History: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Paul S. Boyer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-08-16

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 0199911657

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This volume in Oxford's A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise, readable narrative of the vast span of American history, from the earliest human migrations to the early twenty-first century when the United States loomed as a global power and comprised a complex multi-cultural society of more than 300 million people. The narrative is organized around major interpretive themes, with facts and dates introduced as needed to illustrate these themes. The emphasis throughout is on clarity and accessibility to the interested non-specialist.

Achieving Our Country
Achieving Our Country

Author: Richard Rorty

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 9780674003125

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One of America's foremost philosophers challenges the lost generation of the American Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers such as Walt Whitman and John Dewey.

The Politics of Rage
The Politics of Rage

Author: Dan T. Carter

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2000-02-01

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 9780807125977

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Combining biography with regional and national history, Dan T. Carter chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of George Wallace, a populist who abandoned his ideals to become a national symbol of racism, and later begged for forgiveness. In The Politics of Rage, Carter argues persuasively that the four-time Alabama governor and four-time presidential candidate helped to establish the conservative political movement that put Ronald Reagan in the White House in 1980 and gave Newt Gingrich and the Republicans control of Congress in 1994. In this second edition, Carter updates Wallace’s story with a look at the politician’s death and the nation’s reaction to it and gives a summary of his own sense of the legacy of “the most important loser in twentieth-century American politics.”

The United States in the Long Twentieth Century
The United States in the Long Twentieth Century

Author: Michael Heale

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-11-20

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1472513584

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The United States in the Long Twentieth Century explores the nature of American politics and society in the period from 1900 to the present day, illuminating both the changes and the continuities. This was a period largely characterized by exceptional growth and international power, though one also assailed by the crises and divisions that Michael Heale carefully examines. A strength of the book is its integration of political with social history, and it thus explores a range of social, demographic and economic phenomena that have been central to American history in the long twentieth century, such as immigration and ethnicity, the labour, civil rights and environmental movements, and the role and achievements of women. This new and fully revised edition of the seminal student textbook Twentieth-Century America has been updated throughout to take recent scholarship in the field into account and also includes a number of important new features, including: - a brand new chapter on the years from 2000 onwards, covering 9/11, the financial crisis, and the rise of Barack Obama; - substantial revisions to Part III, covering 1969 to the present day, and in particular to the material on Reagan, Clinton, African Americans, immigrants, the growth of the financial sector and (de)regulation and global warming; one theme is the limits of conservatism and the resilience of liberalism; - greater emphasis on the United States in a transnational world and within the context of the rise of globalization. The United States in the Long Twentieth Century is a detailed guide to American political and social history since 1900 and an essential text for all students interested in the modern history of the United States of America.

Rivalry and Reform
Rivalry and Reform

Author: Sidney M. Milkis

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-01-25

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 022656942X

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Few relationships have proved more pivotal in changing the course of American politics than those between presidents and social movements. For all their differences, both presidents and social movements are driven by a desire to recast the political system, often pursuing rival agendas that set them on a collision course. Even when their interests converge, these two actors often compete to control the timing and conditions of political change. During rare historical moments, however, presidents and social movements forged partnerships that profoundly recast American politics. Rivalry and Reform explores the relationship between presidents and social movements throughout history and into the present day, revealing the patterns that emerge from the epic battles and uneasy partnerships that have profoundly shaped reform. Through a series of case studies, including Abraham Lincoln and abolitionism, Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights movement, and Ronald Reagan and the religious right, Sidney M. Milkis and Daniel J. Tichenor argue persuasively that major political change usually reflects neither a top-down nor bottom-up strategy but a crucial interplay between the two. Savvy leaders, the authors show, use social movements to support their policy goals. At the same time, the most successful social movements target the president as either a source of powerful support or the center of opposition. The book concludes with a consideration of Barack Obama’s approach to contemporary social movements such as Black Lives Matter, United We Dream, and Marriage Equality.

Disorder
Disorder

Author: Peter A. Swenson

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2021-11-30

Total Pages: 583

ISBN-13: 0300262876

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An incisive look into the problematic relationships among medicine, politics, and business in America and their effects on the nation’s health Meticulously tracing the dramatic conflicts both inside organized medicine and between the medical profession and the larger society over quality, equality, and economy in health care, Peter A. Swenson illuminates the history of American medical politics from the late nineteenth century to the present. This book chronicles the role of medical reformers in the progressive movement around the beginning of the twentieth century and the American Medical Association’s dramatic turn to conservatism later. Addressing topics such as public health, medical education, pharmaceutical regulation, and health-care access, Swenson paints a disturbing picture of the entanglements of medicine, politics, and profit seeking that explain why the United States remains the only economically advanced democracy without universal health care. Swenson does, however, see a potentially brighter future as a vanguard of physicians push once again for progressive reforms and the adoption of inclusive, effective, and affordable practices.

Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction
Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Walter Nugent

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0199746559

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After decades of conservative dominance, the election of Barack Obama may signal the beginning of a new progressive era. But what exactly is progressivism? What role has it played in the political, social, and economic history of America? This very timely Very Short Introduction offers an engaging overview of progressivism in America--its origins, guiding principles, major leaders and major accomplishments. A many-sided reform movement that lasted from the late 1890s until the early 1920s, progressivism emerged as a response to the excesses of the Gilded Age, an era that plunged working Americans into poverty while a new class of ostentatious millionaires built huge mansions and flaunted their wealth. As capitalism ran unchecked and more and more economic power was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, a sense of social crisis was pervasive. Progressive national leaders like William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette, and Woodrow Wilson, as well as muckraking journalists like Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, and social workers like Jane Addams and Lillian Wald answered the growing call for change. They fought for worker's compensation, child labor laws, minimum wage and maximum hours legislation; they enacted anti-trust laws, improved living conditions in urban slums, instituted the graduated income tax, won women the right to vote, and laid the groundwork for Roosevelt's New Deal. Nugent shows that the progressives--with the glaring exception of race relations--shared a common conviction that society should be fair to all its members and that governments had a responsibility to see that fairness prevailed. Offering a succinct history of the broad reform movement that upset a stagnant conservative orthodoxy, this Very Short Introduction reveals many parallels, even lessons, highly appropriate to our own time. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.