The long shadow of the Civil War

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William C. Berman

In America's Right Turn, historian William Berman examines the political, cultural, and economic context in which Republican conservatives operated over the past several decades and explores the crisis of the liberal welfare state against the background of presidential politics from Nixon to Clinton. Berman demonstrates the key roles played by conservative populism and by the conservative backlash to the rights revolution in the collapse of Democratic hegemony. But, most importantly, he shows how conservative politics became allied with conservative economics - an alliance forged with singular success during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

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Stephen Lovell

Almost twenty years after the Soviet Union's end, what are we to make of its existence? Was it a heroic experiment, an unmitigated disaster, or a viable if flawed response to the modern world? What was the Soviet Union like? How did it evolve over seven decades? What was the relationship between the regime and the general population? This introduction blends political history with an investigation into the society and culture at the time. The author examines aspects of patriotism, mass culture, political violence, poverty, and ideology; and provides answers to some of the big questions about the Soviet experience.

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Elizabeth York Enstam

Throughout the history of Dallas, women have worked both alongside and apart from the men now remembered as the city's founders and builders. In truth, women helped to create the definitive forms of urban life by establishing organizations and agencies that altered the responsibilities and functions of local government, amended the public conception of political issues, changed the city's physical structure, and affected the day-to-day lives of thousands of people. In Women and the Creation of Urban Life, Elizabeth York Enstam examines how women stretched, redefined, and at times erased the essentially artificial boundaries between female and male, between "the private" and "the public" as aspects of human endeavor. Enstam traces the ways national trends were expressed at the local level and analyzes women's accomplishments and the importance of their work as they assumed community leadership in perpetuating the traditions, education, fine arts, and customs of the larger culture, and in implementing Progressive principles in a specific community.

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Mary E. Hull

Examines the contributions of soldiers, government officials, free blacks, abolitionists, women, and children to the Union cause during the Civil War.