The American Left: Its Impact on Politics and Society since 1900

Conservatives argue that left-wing politics has had an excessive influence in the USA, but few others extend that credit. Now, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones tells the full story of the left’s numerous achievements, from effective opposition to militarism to the winning of racial justice. He shows how the socialists of the Old Left gave way by the 1960s to the anti-war militants of the New Left, who in turn helped spawn a ‘Newer Left’ that moved beyond the by now largely realised socialist agenda. Post-2000, the Bush administration succumbed to the socialism it despised, and now Barack Obama is hailed as a president for the Left.