American dreamers : how the left changed a nation

 by Michael Kazin. The most enduring impact of the radical Left can be found not as much in American politics as in American culture, Kazin says. He traces leftist reform in movements from abolitionism to feminism, the labor movement, and socialism, looking at issues from racial and sexual equality to sexual pleasure outside of marriage as he documents the Left's influence on the American sense of altruism. He begins by examining the abolitionist movement and its effect on the later civil rights movement. Later, he focuses on labor issues and socialism, communism and the anti-Communist movement, and how the Old Left morphed into the New Left. Profiling major figures, he recounts the socialist sensibilities of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Horace Greeley. He makes no claim that this is a comprehensive examination of the Left in the U.S. but affords a fascinating inspection of the convergence of ideals of individual freedom and communal responsibility ideals often in conflict in American politics and how that convergence has influenced American politics and culture for generations. --Booklist (Check Catalog)