American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century

Gary Gerstle

Princeton University Press, 2001 - History - 454 pages

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.

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User Review  - Scapegoats - LibraryThing

A very well-written, easy to read examination of US nationalism. Gerstle claims that US nationalism was based on conflicting ideas of civic and racial nationalism. Civic refers to the ideas of ...

American crucible: race and nation in the twentieth century

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

Beginning with an analysis of Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism and Square Deal platforms, historian Gerstle examines how the concepts of race and nation influenced U.S. history in the 20th century ...

About the author

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).

Bibliographic information

• Title: American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century; Princeton paperbacks
• Author: Gary Gerstle
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2001
• ISBN: 069104984X, 9780691049847
• Length: 454 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / 20th Century