Documents the kaleidoscopic year during which transformative talents from Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, and Beverly Hills heavily influenced pop culture, politics, and social movements.

A history of the role of organized hate in American politics delineates the origins of extreme belief systems as well as the economic and social factors that have contributed to their popularity.

A history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave.

"The legacies of Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn seem like they might be with us forever. Yet Christopher Elias finds in them startling new connections between gender, sexuality, and national security in 20th-century US politics--a paradigm he christens "security state masculinity." Elias integrates biographies of the trio with a history of gossip magazines and their tactics--such as insinuation, guilt by association, hyperbole, and alarmism,...

The New Deal era witnessed a surprising surge in popular engagement with the history and memory of the Civil War era. From the omnipresent book and film 'Gone with the Wind' and the scores of popular theater productions to Aaron Copeland's 'A Lincoln Portrait,' it was hard to miss America's fascination with the war in the 1930s and 1940s. Nina Silber ... examines the often conflicting and politically contentious ways in which Americans remembered...

"An even-handed exploration of the polarized state of campus politics that suggests ways for schools and universities to encourage discourse across difference. College campuses have become flashpoints of the current culture war and, consequently, much ink has been spilled over the relationship between universities and the cultivation or coddling of young American minds. Philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath takes head-on arguments that infantilize students...