xii PrefaCe
way they wanted, not simply follow orders from authority figures. Hippies
did the same. Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest boxers ever, will have a
greater legacy as a political figure whom rejected power and refused to fight
in Vietnam. And so it goes—power can be culturally-imposed, and the resis-
tance to it often takes cultural forms. As Bruce Springsteen sang, “we learned
more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school” as he
advised “no retreat, no surrender.” Chuck D and Public Enemy were more
direct, “Fight the Power, We’ve got to Fight the Powers that be.”
With this focus, and covering topics like Butch Cassidy or the New York
Yankees, this text sets itself apart from traditional overviews of U.S. history.
Most textbooks are almost like encyclopedias; they are filled with pages of
events and people who had historical significance, but the information given
about them is often limited to some basic mention of an idea, a name,
an episode, with no deeper investigation. In the pages of America from
Lincoln to Trump, that is not the case. In this examination of the U.S. from
the Civil War to the present, the theme of power provides an opening to tell
a multi-layered and textured story of American history. Rather than try
to include every event or person of significance, certain topics are
emphasized and given detail. Too many books try to explain the origins of
Capitalism after the Civil War, the labor struggles of the 19th Century, the
causes of the Great Depression, the background to World War II, the
reasons for the Civil Rights movement, cultural opposition, or other such
topics in brief. Here they get a much more complete and thus useful
narrative—one that tells a history that is both important and adequate for
a better understanding.
Nor does this book avoid difficult topics. The origins of the Federal
Reserve or Bretton Woods Systems, the idea behind the “corporate
state,” Franklin Roosevelt’s mixed response to labor, the youth revolt
after World War II, even the political meanings of art and music are topics
that would be barely mentioned in most studies, but here receive
significant coverage. Edward Bernays, a propagandist and advertising genius,
gets much move atten-tion than President Warren G. Harding, and that is
for a reason—he had greater influence over a longer period of time, and
frankly provides a much more interesting case study of the way American
power was developed and used. America from Lincoln to Trump provides the
real story, and a more full story, behind many of the crucial events in
American society since the Civil War. It will explain how the past took us
to the present we now inhabit.