Radicals in America The U.S. Left since the Second World War

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.

Introduction: margin and mainstream; 1. War and peace, 1939–1948; 2. All over this land, 1949–1959; 3. A new left, 1960–1964; 4. The revolution will be live, 1965–1973; 5. Anticipation, 1973–1980; 6. Over the rainbow, 1980–1989; 7. What democracy looks like, 1990 to the present; Conclusion: radicalism's future.

Howard Brick is the Louis Evans Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Daniel Bell and the Decline of Intellectual Radicalism (1986), Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s (1998) and Transcending Capitalism: Visions of a New Society in Modern American Thought (2006).
Christopher Phelps is associate professor of American history at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist (1997) and articles in the Journal of American History, The Nation, The Financial Times and other periodicals. He has received several awards for his historical and political writing.