American History: 20th Century

Arguably one of the most important American writers working today, Wendell Berry, is the author of more than fifty books, including novels and collections of poems, short stories, and essays. A prominent spokesman for agrarian values, Berry frequently defends such practices and ideas as sustainable agriculture, healthy rural communities, connection to place, the pleasures of work, and the interconnectedness of life. This book provides a sweeping engagement with Berry's entire corpus. It introduces the reader to Berry's general philosophy and aesthetic through careful consideration of his essays. It also pays particular attention to Berry as an agrarian, citizen, and patriot, and examines the influence of Christianity on Berry's writings. Much of the book is devoted to lively close readings of Berry's short stories, novels, and poetry.

This book discusses the formulation and execution of U.S. foreign policy in Laos from 1954, when the Geneva Accords ended the First Indochina War, until January 1961, when John F. Kennedy became president. A key initial misstep on the U.S. road to war in Southeast Asia, the American experience in Laos during the Eisenhower administration is a case study in transforming a small foreign policy problem into a large one. Based on documents from the U.S. National Archives, the Eisenhower Library, and other public and private collections of primary sources, the book shows how the administration's efforts to thwart communism in Laos were undermined by ignorance of the country's history and culture; by contradictory policies proposed, and actions pursued, by the State Department, Pentagon, and CIA; and by a lack of unity among the Western allies. A key failure of U.S. policymaking was a lack of awareness that covert intervention in the kingdom's political life had a destabilizing impact on the fragile non-communist base the United States sought to strengthen and unify. Compared to the ideological struggle with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, and to the major cold war battlefields in Europe and Asia, Laos often seemed a small-scale skirmish in the fight against communism. In the last six months of Eisenhower's second term, however, Laos became a priority after a coup d'état, led by an obscure U.S.-trained paratroop captain, evolved into a superpower confrontation that threatened to become another Korean War or worse.

A small neighborhood in north Frankfort, Kentucky, Crawfish Bottom was located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. “Craw's” reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and unsanitary conditions made it a target for state funded urban renewal projects that replaced the neighborhood with Frankfort's Capital Plaza in the mid 1960s. This book traces the evolution of the controversial, yet close-knit community that saw 400 families ultimately displaced by urban renewal policies. Using oral histories and first-hand memories, this book not only provides a record of a vanished neighborhood and its culture but also exemplifies the ways in which this type of study enhances the historical record. A former Frankfort policeman described Craw's residents by saying, “They were a rough class of people, who didn't mind killing or being killed.” This book challenges history's judgmental stance by understanding how the former residents of Craw, sometimes unified by their memories and nostalgia, re-imagine and frame their community's history and how this process influences their sense of place.

In 1917, fifty-two years after its founding, the University of Kentucky faced stagnation, financial troubles, and disturbing reports of nepotism, resulting in a leadership crisis. A special committee investigated the institution and issued a report calling for a massive transformation of the university, including the hiring of a new president who could execute the report's suggested initiatives. The Board of Trustees hired Frank L. McVey. McVey labored tirelessly for more than two decades to establish Kentucky as one of the nation's most respected institutions of higher learning, which brought him recognition as one of the leading progressive educators in the South. This book chronicles McVey's triumphs and challenges as the president sought to transform the university from a small state college into the state's flagship institution. McVey recruited an exceptional faculty, expanded graduate programs, promoted research, oversaw booming enrollments and campus construction, and defended academic freedom during the nation's first major antievolution controversy. Yet he faced challenges related to the development of modern collegiate athletics, a populace suspicious of his remarkable new conception of a state university, and the Great Depression.

History has not been kind to Gerald Ford. His name evokes an image of either America's only unelected president, who abruptly pardoned his corrupt predecessor, or an accident-prone man who failed to provide skilled leadership to a country in domestic turmoil. This book reexamines Ford's two and a half years in office, showing that his presidency successfully confronted the most vexing crises of the postwar era. Surveying the state of America in the 1970s, the book focuses on the economic challenges facing the country. It argues that Ford's understanding of the national economy was better than that of any other modern president, that Ford oversaw a dramatic reduction of inflation, and that his attempts to solve the energy crisis were based in sound economic principles. Throughout his presidency, Ford labored under the legacy of Watergate. Democrats scored landslide victories in the 1974 midterm elections, and the president engaged with a spirited opposition Congress. Within an anemic Republican Party, the right wing challenged Ford's leadership, even as pundits predicted the death of the GOP. Yet Ford reinvigorated the party and fashioned a 1976 campaign strategy against Jimmy Carter that brought him from thirty points behind to a dead heat on election day. This book draws on numerous personal interviews with the former president, cabinet officials, and members of the Ninety-fourth Congress. In this reassessment of this underrated president, Ford emerges as a skilled executive, an effective diplomat, and a leader with a clear vision for America's future. Working to heal a divided nation, Ford unified the GOP and laid the groundwork for the Republican resurgence in subsequent decades.

This book is divided into four periods: 1775 to the beginning of the Civil War, the Civil War to 1900, 1900 to 1941, and World War II to the mid-1980s. Where K12 and higher education intersect, these connections are developed and explained. The book's epilogue also explains the reforms brought about through the Kentucky Education Reform Act and the changes that occurred in higher education from the Patton years to the near present. The history of education in Kentucky cannot be understood without a grounding in political, social, economic, and ethnic history. Moreover, what happens in Kentucky is always part of a larger world, including the southern and Midwestern regions of the United States.

The temperance movement first appeared in America in the 1820s as an outgrowth of the same evangelical fervor that fostered a wide range of reform campaigns. Like many of these movements, temperance was confined primarily to the northeastern United States during the antebellum period. Viewed with suspicion by Southerners because of its close connection to the antislavery movement, prohibition sentiment remained relatively weak in the antebellum South. After the Civil War, however, southern evangelicals embraced the movement, and by 1915, liquor had been officially banned from the region. This book examines how southern evangelical men and women transformed a Yankee moral reform movement into an ideology that was compatible with southern culture and values.

Homemade liquor has played a prominent role in the Appalachian economy for nearly two centuries. The region endured profound transformations during the extreme prohibition movements of the nineteenth century, when the manufacturing and sale of alcohol—an integral part of daily life for many Appalachians—was banned. This book chronicles the social tensions that accompanied the region's early transition from a rural to an urban-industrial economy. The book analyzes the dynamic relationship of the bootleggers and opponents of liquor sales in western North Carolina, as well as conflict driven by social and economic development that manifested in political discord. The book also explores the life of the moonshiner and the many myths that developed around hillbilly stereotypes.

This book examines the growth of the University of North Carolina (UNC) during the school's formative years between the World Wars. Academic freedom—its history and its current meaning—is often misunderstood within and without the academy. This book takes an “on the ground” approach to the history of academic freedom. It focuses on how in the early 1900s the newly heralded principle of academic freedom led to UNC's role as an expertly trained advocate for improving labor relations and race relations in the South. UNC's reputation as one of the South's leading institutions of higher education drew some of the nation's top educators to its classrooms and helped it become a regional model of the modern university. This generation of professors defined themselves as truth-seekers whose work had the potential to enact positive social change; while university leaders like Frank Graham defended the professors' freedom to choose and cultivate their own curriculum and research to obtain this goal. Proponents of academic freedom argued that the expertise of the faculty would help lift the state and even the entire South out of poverty and place it on the road to progress. However, its location in the country's most conservative region presented challenges as new ideas of academic freedom and liberalism central to its educational philosophy sparked loud opposition among business leaders, anticommunists, white supremacists, and conservatives generally.