Interpretations of American History, Volume 2

Gerald N. Grob and George Athan Billias, eds. Interpretations of American History, Volume 2 since 1865, Patterns and Perspectives. New York: The Free Press, 1967

I already reviewed Volume I a few weeks ago, and I have little to add to that review; the second volume continues the same approach, and has the same strengths and potential weaknesses as the first.

The one difference of significance between the two volumes is that the latter covers more recent events; the final article was originally published in 1964 and is a tentative retrospective of the Kennedy presidency. The final chapter covers the post-World War II era, and is therefore such recent history at the time of publication that it was somewhat difficult to fully define different schools of thought. Still, the essential political question these pieces address--the degree to which New Deal liberalism would or would not continue to define the new establishment consensus--seems to be fairly accurate even with the benefit of a further half-century of retrospect.

Like the first volume, this is still a very valuable, if necessarily incomplete, introduction to some of the main themes in American historiography.