Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism - by Thomas W Devine (Paperback)

About the Book

Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism

Book Synopsis

In the presidential campaign of 1948, Henry Wallace set out to challenge the conventional wisdom of his time, blaming the United States, instead of the Soviet Union, for the Cold War, denouncing the popular Marshall Plan, and calling for an end to segregation. In addition, he argued that domestic fascism--rather than international communism--posed the primary threat to the nation. He even welcomed Communists into his campaign, admiring their commitment to peace. Focusing on what Wallace himself later considered his campaign's most important aspect, the troubled relationship between non-Communist progressives like himself and members of the American Communist Party, Thomas W. Devine demonstrates that such an alliance was not only untenable but, from the perspective of the American Communists, undesirable.
Rather than romanticizing the political culture of the Popular Front, Devine provides a detailed account of the Communists' self-destructive behavior throughout the campaign and chronicles the frustrating challenges that non-Communist progressives faced in trying to sustain a movement that critiqued American Cold War policies and championed civil rights for African Americans without becoming a sounding board for pro-Soviet propaganda.

Review Quotes

"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

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

A revision of the revisionists.--The New Yorker

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

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

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

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

Very engrossing.--Ballot Access News

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