Rich Baldwin Bloomington High School

What is liberalism? Coming of age in the 1980s, I had been led to believe is was an evil force in American government. A bleeding heart group of politicians that hoped to save the whales, feed the poor, clean up the environment and take money away from hard working Americans to pay for it all. While H.W. Brands may not completely disagree with this definition, in his work The Strange Death of American Liberalism he takes a much broader approach to the term. Brands defines liberalism as, "a prevailing confidence in the ability of the government preeminently the federal government to accomplish substantial good on behalf of the American people." (VIII) He argues this confidence peaks in times of war, and that the high water mark for American liberalism came during the coldest years of the Cold War in the late 1940s and 1950s. In this context, Brands asserts that without a war preceding it, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal was not as liberal as historians make it out to be, that by bringing down Richard Nixon, liberals destroyed the trust that fed there own existence, and that Ronald Reagan was actually stuck in a liberal dilemma of demanding the trust of the American people in foreign policy while dismantling the trust in regards to domestic policy. While extremely controversial, Brands' thesis is engaging. It makes sense to the average reader, and is presented efficiently. In 177 pages Brands is able to trace the argument from the Revolution through the Clinton administration.

It is this efficiency, however, that may cause more critical readers to view this as selective history. At times, Brand seems to leave out, or simply disregard points in history that would not support his thesis. Following Brands' argument the distaste Americans had for the reconstruction era combined with the absence of a war should have created a conservative period of government inactivity from the 1880s to the turn of the century. Yet, the government was extremely active in closing the western frontier and settling Americans into the plains states during this period. Brands also fails to explain how such a conservative society could emerge from a liberal period of government activeness in the late 1940s and 1950s. In addition he overlooks the contributions of grassroots social movements, such as the civil rights movement, in demanding and creating government activity, choosing instead to focus on the efforts of presidents and administrations. The critical historian will notice these gaps and demand a more thorough explanation.

From the point of view of the average high school history teacher, however, this work has appealing value. It is efficient, which makes it usable in the typical survey American history course. It presents an engaging, easy to follow thesis that is controversial enough to stimulate plenty of discussion. In addition, it provides a good lesson in historical writing pitting style versus substance. While Brands argument could be simply accepted by students, the book also provides teachers with the opportunity to emphasize the importance of telling the complete story when writing history.

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