The dramatic confrontation between civil-rights activism and the establishment power of Lyndon Johnson that transformed the movement and national politics.In August 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, a Mississippi sharecropper, Fannie Lou Hamer, challenged Lyndon Johnson and the party establishment with the stinging question, “Is this America?” Hamer was a leader of the Freedom Democratic Party, the outgrowth of grassroots voting rights c...

REVISED EDITION WITH A NEW CHAPTER AND EPILOGUETwo award-winning and best-selling historians explore the origins of a divided America in a new edition of Fault Lines.In this fully updated second edition of their masterful history, leading historians and best-selling authors Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer uncover the origins of our current moment, answering the question: When—and how—did America become so polarized? It all sta...

Leading historians offer the first look at Biden’s four years in the White HouseThe Presidency of Joseph R. Biden presents a first draft of history by providing insights into how this one-term president fits within the broader historical forces shaping the United States in the twenty-first century. Acclaimed political historian Julian Zelizer brings together some of today’s leading scholars to give balanced and strikingly original assessments of the major ...

The nation's top political scientists, historians, and legal scholars propose solutions for democracy's futureIn recent years, the sight of gun-wielding citizens patrolling ballot boxes and voting sites has become increasingly familiar. Major news corporations parroting false claims of election fraud, ballot stuffing, and faulty voting systems is the new normal. In an era of global anti-democratic movements, the sanctity of democratic electoral processes has become...

“Contravening conventional wisdom, Zelizer offers a spirited defense of parties and partisanship.” —Frances Lee, Princeton UniversityPartisanship is a dirty word in American politics. If there is one issue on which almost everyone in our divided country seems to agree, it’s the belief that the intense loyalty within the electorate toward Democrats and Republicans is the source of our democratic ills—division, dysfunction, distrust, and disinformation. The possibili...

The sociologist Daniel Bell was an uncommonly acute observer of the structural forces transforming the United States and other advanced societies in the twentieth century. The titles of Bell’s major books—The End of Ideology (1960), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)—became hotly debated frameworks for understanding the era when they were published.In Defining the Age, Paul Starr and...

On January 6, 2021, more than two thousand rioters stormed the doors of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., hoping to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power from former president Donald Trump to his successor, Joseph Biden. The deaths, property damage, and vicious rampage that ensued were witnessed on live television as an unprecedented attack on the democratic process and those who strive to protect it.As an installment of UGA Press’s History in the Headlines series, ...

Leading historians provide perspective on Trump’s four turbulent years in the White HouseThe Presidency of Donald J. Trump presents a first draft of history by offering needed perspective on one of the nation’s most divisive presidencies. Acclaimed political historian Julian Zelizer brings together many of today’s top scholars to provide balanced and strikingly original assessments of the major issues that shaped the Trump presidency....

"A gripping and troubling account of the origins of our turbulent times.” —Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United StatesWhen—and how—did America become so polarized? In this masterful history, leading historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer uncover the origins of our current moment. It all starts in 1974 with the Watergate crisis, the OPEC oil embargo, desegregation busing riots in Boston, and the wind-down of the Vietnam War....

Since Ronald Reagan left office in 1989, the global community has witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the integration of Europe, the War on Terror and the Arab Spring, a hot Chinese economy and a major international recession. Reagan’s Legacy in a World Transformed brings together scholars from diverse disciplines and persuasions to assess the fortieth president’s policies and their ongoing impact today, and to offer a timely retrospective on his complex legacy....

From the creation of newspapers with national reach in the late nineteenth century to the lightning-fast dispatches and debates of today's Internet, the media have played an enormous role in modern American politics. Scholars of political history universally concede the importance of this relationship yet have devoted scant attention to its development during the past century. Even as mass media have largely replaced party organizations as the main vehicles through which politicians commun...

An original and engaging account of the Obama years from a group of leading political historiansBarack Obama's election as the first African American president seemed to usher in a new era, and he took office in 2009 with great expectations. But by his second term, Republicans controlled Congress, and, after the 2016 presidential election, Obama's legacy and the health of the Democratic Party itself appeared in doubt. In The Presidency of Barack Obama, Jul...