“One of the many virtues of Kevin Boyle’s brilliant and important history, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, is that it provides a clear picture of the road not taken.”
— The American Prospect
Order The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968
A Choice Magazine “Outstanding Academic Book for 1996”
Engrossing and deeply developed, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism offers a compelling reassessment of labor’s place in postwar American politics. The United Automobile Workers, Kevin Boyle shows, was deeply involved in the pivotal political struggles of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, from the fight for full employment to the battle for civil rights, from the anticommunist crusade to the Vietnam War.
Praise for The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism
“Intelligent, well written, and exhaustively researched, … Boyle’s work … is part of an important and increasingly favorable reevaluation of the character of late New Deal social democracy.”
Praise for The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism
“Kevin Boyle has done a masterful job of identifying the unique contribution of the UAW, not only to American Liberalism, but also to the nation and to all people. As contemporary labor and society at large search for new directions, this book should be required reading.”
— Victor G. Reuther
“[Boyle’s] book presents, with a remarkably assured tone and a mastery of materials, a persuasive narrative of the shortcomings of postwar liberalism from the labor perspective that was so important then and is so often ignored today.”
— American Political Science Review
“Through a wonderfully textured discussion of the UAW and national politics, Boyle brings the state back into labor history.”
— International Labor and Working Class History
