Michael W. Flamm

Used for teaching. I'm not sure either half of the book does a good job of explaining liberalism to students, but the Liberal/Radical debates section especially does not do a great job; it's unclear to students the difference between liberals and radicals as they're being defined in this book, much less more broadly. The Liberal/Conservative section does a little better, but fails to put the definition in conversation with a longer history of liberalism to contextualize it for students. Additionally, the Conservative section plays the debate so even as to overlook certain aspects--the "social order" section mentions the "possibility" of racism in thinking through these sets of policies. It could maybe be paired with Imani Perry's work out of Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation about "order" and Nixon's language, but otherwise underplays the policies to students who don't have a larger grasp of the kind of hidden racialized language in these claims.

Overall I'd say it does an okay job; the primary sources are a little superfluous given that we're also using a primary source reader that covers SDS, the Great Society, and the New Right, but ymmv on that front.… (meer)