Gary Gerstle is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland.
He is the author of Working-Class Americanism, a coauthor of Liberty, Equality, and Power: A History of the American
People, and the coeditor of The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980 (Princeton) and E Pluribus Unum?
Immigrants, Civic Life, and Political Incorporation (forthcoming).
Review
"This informed and well-argued study is a strong addition to the literature on race, multiculturalism,
and citizenship in the U.S . . . Gerstle [has] in this engrossing, powerfully argued study . . . a meticulous eye
for detail."
--Publishers Weekly
"This tightly argued historical synthesis is likely to be . . . influential to understanding the evolution
of American nationalism in the past 100 years. . . ."
--Library Journal
"American Crucible is an illuminating addition to what has become a vibrant academic cottage industry, the
study of nationalism. . . . [A] confident and elegantly written narrative. . . ."
--John T. McGreevy, Chicago Tribune
"A fresh and accessible book that fully examines [a] fundamental American paradox. He has credibly and fascinatingly,
traced the odd mixture of high ideals and base doubts that shaped race and immigration policy over the last century."
--Joseph Dolman, The New Leader
"The most probing and thought-provoking history of American nationalism ever written."
--James Green, The Boston Globe
"Gerstle straddles the Old and the New Left, and this gives him a perspective that frequently makes for a
fertile and unpredictable analysis."
--Peter Skerry, National Journal
"The publication of this book could not be more timely. The first eighty pages should be compulsory reading
for anybody in the United Kingdom (and elsewhere) involved with immigrants or asylum-seekers, whether at the level
of policy-making, policy administration, or merely as citizen hosts."
--Jim Potter, Times Literary Supplement
Princeton University Press Web Site, September, 2002
Summary
This sweeping history of twentieth-century America follows the changing and often conflicting ideas about the
fundamental nature of American society: Is the United States a social melting pot, as our civic creed warrants,
or is full citizenship somehow reserved for those who are white and of the "right" ancestry? Gary Gerstle
traces the forces of civic and racial nationalism, arguing that both profoundly shaped our society.
After Theodore Roosevelt led his Rough Riders to victory during the Spanish American War, he boasted of the diversity
of his men's origins- from the Kentucky backwoods to the Irish, Italian, and Jewish neighborhoods of northeastern
cities. Roosevelt's vision of a hybrid and superior "American race," strengthened by war, would inspire
the social, diplomatic, and economic policies of American liberals for decades. And yet, for all of its appeal
to the civic principles of inclusion, this liberal legacy was grounded in "Anglo-Saxon" culture, making
it difficult in particular for Jews and Italians and especially for Asians and African Americans to gain acceptance.
Gerstle weaves a compelling story of events, institutions, and ideas that played on perceptions of ethnic/racial
difference, from the world wars and the labor movement to the New Deal and Hollywood to the Cold War and the civil
rights movement. We witness the remnants of racial thinking among such liberals as FDR and LBJ; we see how Italians
and Jews from Frank Capra to the creators of Superman perpetuated the New Deal philosophy while suppressing their
own ethnicity; we feel the frustrations of African-American servicemen denied the opportunity to fight for their
country and the moral outrage of more recent black activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer,
and Malcolm X.
Gerstle argues that the civil rights movement and Vietnam broke the liberal nation apart, and his analysis of this
upheaval leads him to assess Reagan's and Clinton's attempts to resurrect nationalism. Can the United States ever
live up to its civic creed? For anyone who views racism as an aberration from the liberal premises of the republic,
this book is must reading.
Table of Contents
List of Figures xi
Acknowledgments xiii
INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1: Theodore Roosevelt's Racialized Nation, 1890-1900 14
A History of the American ''Race'' 17
War, Renewal, and the Problem of the ''Smoked Yankee'' 25
CHAPTER 2: Civic Nationalism and Its Contradictions, 1890-1917 44
''True Americanism'' 47
Racial Dilemmas 59
The New Nationalism 65
CHAPTER: Hardening the Boandaries of the Nation, 1917-1929 81
War and Discipline 8
''Keeping Pure the Blood of America'' 95
Civic Nationalism in the New Racial Regime 115
Aborting the New Nationalism 122
CHAPTER 4: The Rooseveltion Nation Ascendant, 1930-1940 128
A Kinder and Gentler Nation Builder 131
Radicalizing the Civic Nationalist Creed 139
Conservative Counterattack 156
The Survival of Racialized Nationalism 162
CHAPTER 5: Good War, Race War, 1941-1945 187
The Good War 189
Race War 201
''Something Drastic Should Be Done'': The Military's Hidden Race War 210
Combat and White Male Comradeship 220
CHAPTER 6: The Cold War, Anticommunism, and Nation in Flux, 1946-1960 28
War, Repression, and Nation Building 241
The Red Scare and the Decline of Racial Nationalism 246
Racial Nationalism Redux: The Case of Immigration Reform 256
CHAPTER 7: Civil Rights, White Resistance, and Black Nationalism, 1960-1968 268
Civil Rights and Civic Nationalism 270
''I Question America'': The Crisis in Atlantic City 286
''Speaking as a Victim of This American System'' 295
CHAPTER 8: Vietnam, Cultural Revolt, and the Collapse of the Rooseveltion Nation, 1968-1975 311
A Catastrophic War 313
The Spread of Anti-Americanism and the Revolt against
Assimilation 327
The Collapse of the Rooseveltian Nation 342
EPILOGUE: Beyond the Rooseveltion Nation, 1975-2000 347
Varieties of Multiculturalism 349
''A Springtime of Hope'': Ronald Reagan and the Nationalist Renaissance 357
Reviving the Liberal Nation 365
