Overview

A panoramic yet intimate history of the American left--of the reformers, radicals, and idealists who have fought for a more just and humane society, from the abolitionists to Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky--that gives us a revelatory new way of looking at two centuries of American politics and culture.
Michael Kazin--one of the most respected historians of the American left working today--takes us from abolitionism and early feminism to the labor struggles of the industrial age, through the emergence of anarchists, socialists, and communists, right up to the New Left in the 1960s and '70s. While the history of the left is a long story of idealism and determination, it has also been, in the traditional view, a story of movements that failed to gain support from mainstream America. In American Dreamers, Kazin tells a new history: one in which many of these movements, although they did not fully succeed on their own terms, nonetheless made lasting contributions to American society that led to equal opportunity for women, racial minorities, and homosexuals; the celebration of sexual pleasure; multiculturalism in the media and the schools; and the popularity of books and films with altruistic and antiauthoritarian messages.
Deeply informed, at once judicious and impassioned, and superbly written, American Dreamers is an essential book for our times and for anyone seeking to understand our political history and the people who made it.

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9780307266286

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Reviews

More Praise for Michael Kazin's AMERICAN DREAMERS: <br> <br> Compendious and erudite . . . Kazin's is no rosy account of the continual march of progress; rather, it is a careful and nuanced view of the saga of the American left . . . For the political junkie as well as those simply curious about the saga of the left, his book is helpfully crammed with numerous informative portraits of famous as well as more neglected figures. --Jacob Heilbrunn, The Washington Monthly <br> A spirited defense of the positive role played by left-wing radicals in shaping American society. . . . A coherent, wide-ranging analysis of a century of political and social activism in America. -- Kirkus Reviews <br> [A] perceptive history of the radical left . . . a lively and lucid synthesis of a vital political tradition. -- Publishers Weekly <br> <br> Young progressives owe themselves the pleasure of reading American Dreamers to understand the tradition in which they're engaged and howr

<p> Lively and illuminating . . . Kazin's book [is] a pleasure, but it is also a work of honest rigor. Kazin understands the limitations of the left, its self-destructive divisions, its difficulty in establishing an American presence within an international movement . . . It is, to say the least, timely. <br>--Jim Newton, Los Angeles Times <br> Compendious and erudite . . . Kazin's is no rosy account of the continual march of progress; rather, it is a careful and nuanced view of the saga of the American left . . . For the political junkie as well as those simply curious about the saga of the left, his book is helpfully crammed with numerous informative portraits of famous as well as more neglected figures. --Jacob Heilbrunn, The Washington Monthly <br> A spirited defense of the positive role played by left-wing radicals in shaping American society. . . . A coherent, wide-ranging analysis of a century of political and social activism in America. -- Kirkus Reviews <br>

More Praise for Michael Kazin's AMERICAN DREAMERS: <br> <br> Compendious and erudite . . . Kazin's is no rosy account of the continual march of progress; rather, it is a careful and nuanced view of the saga of the American left . . . For the political junkie as well as those simply curious about the saga of the left, his book is helpfully crammed with numerous informative portraits of famous as well as more neglected figures. --Jacob Heilbrunn, The Washington Monthly <br> A spirited defense of the positive role played by left-wing radicals in shaping American society. . . . A coherent, wide-ranging analysis of a century of political and social activism in America. -- Kirkus Reviews <br> [A] perceptive history of the radical left . . . a lively and lucid synthesis of a vital political tradition. -- Publishers Weekly <br> <br> Young progressives owe themselves the pleasure of reading American Dreamers to understand the tradition in which they're engaged and howo

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