Reichard, Politics As Usual - The Age Of Truman And Eisenhower

Abstract

With the end of the Cold War and the terrorist attacks of September I I, 200 I, much has changed since Gary Reichard's Politics as Usual appeared in 1988. Accordingly, the new second edition incorporates recent scholarship informed by the opening of Soviet archives, and it gives greater attention to events in the Middle East. Despite the changes, Reichard's theme remains consistent: The period between 1945 and 1960 was "the last sustained period when 'politics as usual ' prevailed in the United States." What other writers have seen as the age of the "vital center" or of the "liberal consensus," Reichard, a historian and administrator at California State University, Long Beach, sees as a period of "a seemingly purposeful equilibrium."