Visions of Progress

"Liberals and leftists in the United States have not always been estranged from one another as they are today. In his new book, historian Doug Rossinow examines how the cooperation and the creative tension between left-wing radicals and liberal reformers advanced many of the most important political values of the twentieth century, including free speech, freedom of conscience, and racial equality." "Visions of Progress chronicles the broad alliances of radical and liberal figures who were driven by a particular concept of social progress - a transformative vision in which the country would become not simply wealthier or a bit fairer but fundamentally more democratic, just, and united. Believers in this vision - from the settlement-house pioneer Jane Addams and the civil rights leader W.E.B. DuBois in the 1890s and after, to the founders of the ACLU in the 1920s, to Minnesota Governor Floyd Olson and assorted labor union radicals in the 1930s, to New Dealer Henry Wallace in the 1940s - belonged to a left-liberal tradition in America. They helped push political leaders, including Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, toward reforms that made the goals of op