Subject: History / United States / 20th Century

Subject: History / United States / 20th Century

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Roads Not Taken

|9780822965039|An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt|A journalist, diplomat, and writer, William Christian Bullitt (1891-1967) negotiated with Lenin and Stalin, Churchill and de Gaulle, Chiang Kai-shek and Goering. He took part in the talks that ended World War I and those that failed to prevent World War II. While his former disciples led American diplomacy into the Cold War, Bullitt became an early enthusiast of the European Union. From his early (1919) proposal of disassembling the former Russian Empire into dozens of independent states, to his much later (1944) advice to land the American troops in the Balkans rather than…

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Cultivating Victory

|9780822966654|The Women’s Land Army and the Victory Garden Movement| During the First and Second World Wars, food shortages reached critical levels in the Allied nations. The situation in England, which relied heavily on imports and faced German naval blockades, was particularly dire. Government campaigns were introduced in both Britain and the United States to recruit individuals to work on rural farms and to raise gardens in urban areas. These recruits were primarily women, who readily volunteered in what came to be known as Women’s Land Armies. Stirred by national propaganda campaigns and a sense of adventure, these women, eager to…

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Presidential Delegation of Authority in Wartime

|9780822960478|Administration in time of war has come to revolve around the President, and much of the administrative authority of the President is then delegated to extralegal agents. Grundstein's analysis of the experiences of World War I show that such delegation is inevitable: From the beginning of the war Congress delegated many powers to the Chief Executive, who, of necessity, named others to act for him in the prosecution of the war. Furthermore, Congress granted these administrative powers without formally establishing new administrative agencies with attendant Congressional oversight. Though constitutionally the President's powers are exclusively executive as distinguished from administrative, beginning…

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The Progressives and the Slums

|9780822983798|Tenement House Reform in New York City, 1890-1917|The Progressives and the Slums chronicles the reform of tenement housing, where some of the worst living conditions in the world existed. Roy Lubove focuses his study on New York City, detailing the methods, accomplishments, and limitations of housing reform at the turn of the twentieth century. The book is based in part on personal interviews with, and the unpublished writings of Lawrence Veiller, the dominant figure in housing reform between 1898 and 1920. Lubove views Veiller's role, surveys developments prior to 1890, and views housing reform within the broader context of progressive-era…

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Toward a National Power Policy

|9780822984443|The New Deal and the Electric Utility Industry, 1933–1941|Toward a National Power Policy offers a comprehensive analysis of the conflict between Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the electric utility industry. Philip J. Funigiello outlines the origins and evolution of the privately owned industry, and the growth of an anti-monopoly movement in the 1920s. He details the four major areas of conflict between public and private interests: the Holding Company Act, the Rural Electrification Administration, the Bonneville Power Administration, and power planning for the second World War. Funigiello reveals the complexities of top-level policymaking and the networks of interpersonal relationships…

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