Mastery and Drift - by Brent Cebul & Lily Geismer (Hardcover)

About the Book

"How did the mastery of twentieth-century American liberalism drift away? What is American liberalism now? Here, an assortment of scholars try to make sense of recent American liberalism and how it's been articulated, weaponized, or wrecked in different contexts. The book aims to address the seemingly paradoxical place of liberalism in contemporary American life and historical scholarship, where liberalism can appear both politically wan and culturally dominant. In seeking to understand liberalism as it has been lived more than as it has been theorized, the contributors take on subjects as varied as health and welfare, race and immigration, economics, technocracy, and war"--

Book Synopsis

A revelatory look at modern liberalism's historical evolution and enduring impact on contemporary politics and society.

Since the 1960s, American liberalism and the Democratic Party have been remade along professional class lines, widening liberalism's impact but narrowing its social and political vision. In Mastery and Drift, historians Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer have assembled a group of scholars to address the formation of "professional-class liberalism" and its central role in remaking electoral politics and the practice of governance. Across subjects as varied as philanthropy, consulting, health care, welfare, race, immigration, economics, and foreign conflicts, the authors examine not only the gaps between liberals' egalitarian aspirations and their approaches to policymaking but also how the intricacies of contemporary governance have tended to bolster professional-class liberals' power.

The contributors to Mastery and Drift all came of age amid the development of professional-class liberalism, giving them distinctive and important perspectives in understanding its internal limitations and its relationship to neoliberalism and the Right. With never-ending disputes over the meaning of liberalism, the content of its governance, and its relationship to a resurgent Left, now is the time to consider modern liberalism's place in contemporary American life.

Review Quotes

"With all the attention the history of American conservatism has belatedly gotten, the extraordinary transformations of liberalism in the last few decades might get lost. With its dream team of scholars, this essential collection on the professionalism and technocracy of our time ensures that won't happen."--Samuel Moyn, author of 'Liberalism against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times'

"As the brilliant contributors to Mastery and Drift make clear, modern liberalism has been remade in recent decades by a new generation of professional-class liberals who infused American politics and policymaking with their own particular ideas and influence. This cutting-edge collection is simply a must-read." --Kevin M. Kruse, Princeton University

About the Author

Brent Cebul is associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century and the coeditor of Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century. With Geraldo Cadava, N. D. B Connolly, and Lily Geismer, he is a coeditor of the new political history series America Reframed, published by the University of Chicago Press. Lily Geismer is professor of history at Claremont McKenna College and the author of Left Behind: The Democrats' Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality and Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, as well as the coeditor of Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century. With Geraldo Cadava, Brent Cebul, and N. D. B Connolly, she is coeditor of the new political history series America Reframed, published by the University of Chicago Press.