Among other things, the phenomenal popularity of Broadway’s Hamilton shows that American history isn’t as boring as the average high school history teacher. Here are a few recent titles that bring to life crucial episodes from our nation’s past.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: The War Years, 1939-1945 (University of Illinois Press), by Roger Daniels
Part two of Roger Daniels’ magisterial examination of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, The War Years, recounts a familiar story. FDR cautiously inched the U.S. toward World War II by supporting the Western European allies, denouncing the threat of Nazi “world domination” and becoming the proprietor of “the Arsenal of Democracy.” Pearl Harbor surprised FDR in Daniels’ reading of the archives, but he responded to events with his usual resourcefulness. A less-known aspect of his presidency in the years preceding Pearl Harbor was FDR’s use of the threat of war to salvage Congressional support for the New Deal under the guise of “war preparedness.” The University of Cincinnati history professor reminds us of something else: FDR was also determined to win the peace that followed.
Ghetto: The Invention of a Place and the History of an Idea (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Mitchell Duneier
In 1944, Virginia Dobbin, an African American, bought a house on a white block near Chicago’s black district. On moving day, she found her white neighbors stripping the building of plumbing. When Dobbin went to the police, she was told there was nothing they could do. To underline their point, the neighbors finally set fire to the house. Princeton sociologist Mitchell Duneier cites the case in Ghetto, an eye-opening study into the origins, patterns and persistence of black segregation in the U.S. While many overt manifestations of racism have disappeared, Duneier asserts that the withholding of services from lower-class neighborhoods continues to foster social decay and perpetuate a cycle of desperation. “Criminal behaviors, partly brought about by the ghetto itself, lead to further exclusion—first in prisons and later in certain zip codes where large numbers of ex-felons tend to live.”
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Executing the Rosenbergs: Death & Diplomacy in a Cold War World (Oxford University Press), by Lori Clune
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were guilty of spying for the Soviet Union. The problem with the case against them, however, began with the charge that they delivered “the secret of the atomic bomb” to the Soviets. Julius’ spy ring did provide the USSR with technology but not world-destroying technology. Next: While Ethel knew what her husband was up to, she was no spy. And finally: The couple was railroaded into the electric chair by the Truman administration, eager to appear tough in the face of Communist threats. Historian Lori Clune adds to the sad story by uncovering a trove of documents showing the U.S. government’s concern over how the Rosenberg trial played overseas, where huge demonstrations denouncing their execution amounted to a defeat for America’s propaganda war against the Soviet foe.
Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation (Louisiana State University Press), by Michael Brem Bonner
Thinking of how the South operated during the Civil War, what comes to mind are slaves toiling under the anxious eyes of overseers while white men went off to the front. Confederate Political Economy paints a fuller picture. In his groundbreaking and commendably succinct study, University of South Carolina, Lancaster history professor Michael Brem Bonner examines how the South mobilized its cotton-based economy (staving off defeat by one of the world’s great industrial nations for four years) through public-private sector partnerships. One example: a capable Yankee West Point graduate, married to a Southerner, who took charge of gunpowder production and kept the Confederate army supplied throughout the war. Bonner’s finding about the Confederacy’s centralized system upends conservative notions of the South as a bastion of states’ rights and private enterprise. And unlike most commentators, he actually read the Confederate constitution and finds, apart from countenancing slavery, features that might appeal to 21st-century reformers.
