Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism Hardcover – May 27, 2013

A valuable addition to the scholarship on postwar liberalism and American politics in general.--H-USA



[An] excellent book. . . . This will surely remain the definitive work on the Wallace movement for many years to come.--Journal of American Studies



"In some respects, Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism is a critique of historians who have seen postwar Popular Front liberalism as a positive force in American politics.--Annals of Iowa



Thomas W. Devine's new study of Wallace is a serious work of history. The book seems likely to stand as the definitive account of Wallace's ill-fated presidential campaign and the ideological and political developments it represented.--Journal of Cold War Studies



With careful scrutiny of Wallace's language, assumptions, and arguments, Devine offers a fairly devastating portrait of a flawed man and an even more flawed crusade.--Dissent



Very engrossing.--Ballot Access News



A marvelous example of scholarship on the failure of Wallace and the Progressives in 1948.--Middle West Review



Will likely become the definitive volume on the Progressive Party and the 1948 election.--Journal of Southern History



Exhaustively researched and elegantly argued, the book places the Wallace campaign into a larger context of late 1940s post-Popular Front politics that sheds new light on the road of American leftist political activism in these years.--American Historical Review



A revision of the revisionists.--The New Yorker



This is not a Wallace biography; it's a penetrating and persuasive account of the first postwar U.S. presidential contest and one of the most contentious in our history. Highly recommended, especially for serious students of American politics and presidential elections.--Library Journal



The research is excellent, and Devine tells the history in a straightforward way. A must read for all students of the period. Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.--Choice



This book will be the definitive account of Henry Wallace's 1948 presidential campaign.--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

As Devine focuses on the interplay between Communists and non-Communist liberals in Wallace's campaign, he analyzes a key episode in the history of American liberalism and the onset of the Cold War. This remarkably well-written book is a genuine pleasure to read. The quality of Devine's research and analysis is outstanding, the issues he addresses are lively and relevant, and his judgments are shrewd and clear.--Robert Zieger, author of For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865



A work of superb historical scholarship. The breadth and depth of Devine's archival research is truly impressive and his command of the secondary literature equally so. Impressive as well is the maturity of his historical judgment and his understanding of both mainstream and liberal/left American politics. This book is the most complete and insightful historical account available of Wallace's 1948 campaign and the self-destruction of Popular Front progressivism in the post-World War II era and will be indispensable reading for anyone seriously seeking to understand the trajectory of postwar American liberalism.--John Earl Haynes, author of Red Scare or Red Menace? American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era



A superb book that gets to the heart of things. Devine has made all previous books on this subject obsolete with new evidence and his interpretation of it.--William L. O'Neill, Rutgers University