The War in American Culture explores the role of World War II in the transformation of American social, cultural, and political life.
World War II posed a crisis for American culture: to defeat the enemy, Americans had to unite across the class, racial and ethnic boundaries that had long divided them. Exploring government censorship of war photography, the revision of immigration laws, Hollywood moviemaking, swing music, and popular magazines, these essays reveal the creation of a new national identity that was pluralistic, but also controlled and sanitized. Concentrating on the...

After the Strike places two important episodes in American labor history, the 1894 Pullman strike and the rise of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, into a new perspective - the century-long development of union organizing and labor-management relations in the Pullman Company. Connecting the stories of Pullman car builders and porters takes us to the heart of critical questions about American society: What created job segregation by race and gender? What role did such segregation play in shaping the labor movement? Susan Eleanor Hirsch illuminates, as have few others, the relationship...