Clashes of Will: Great Confrontations That Have Shaped Modern America

Broesamle and Arthur's precise attention to detail allows us to regard anew contentious periods in American history. Marvelous prose and even some sly humor make this book a pleasure to read.

During several car trips, my husband and I read aloud Broesamle and Arthur's Clashes of Will and found ourselves eager to begin "just one more chapter," hoping not to reach our destination before we finished it. In each chapter, the authors posited two personalities and the conflicts that providence placed before them. For me the personality and historical development of those individuals transformed them from names in a book to people with logical rationale and reasonable urgings to confront issues as they did. The authors' scholarship and insights have produced an interesting and captivating read.

Broesamle and Arthur chisel into the reader's mind images of some of the most important and eccentric figures in U. S. political history and place them in the context of the confrontations that made them famous. This book is equally valuable for the general reader and the specialist. In addition, it's a darn good read.

Finally, a book for people who were never taught to love history. The characters materialize as though from fiction, yet everything is true. Readers who want to understand America's dilemmas today should start here.

This is a splendid volume for both students and informed general readers. Professors of History and English, the authors are fully qualified to meet the ambitious goals they set for themselves. Broesamle's latest volume is a prize-winning book on the cycles of reform and reaction in America; Arthur is currently completing what will be the most authoritative biography of Upton Sinclair. Broesamle and Arthur relate and analyze many of the most controversial and consequential issues facing the nation in the 20th century through exploring the ideas and arguments of prominent individuals. The approach is very effective and rewarding. It serves not ony to focus and shape the debates involving complex and amorphous subjects, but it also gives them a human face. The reader is further enriched by the fact that the authors are not serving up pop or pablum. Instead, Broesamle and Arthur present sophisticated essays based on the most recent and best scholarship in jargon-free, elegant prose fully accessible to the intelligent reader. Deftly capturing the passion and intensity generated by fundamental disagreements over matters vital to the nation, culture, and society, the volume enlightens the debate without taking sides and with the appropriate scholarly detachment. Readers will differ over which subjects and which essays they find the most appealing. They will not differ over the quality of the entire menu they're offered. Consider the list: Geronimo and Generals Crook and Miles over American land ownership; Pullman and Debs on labor rights; Washington and DuBois on black-white race relations; Muir and Roosevelt concerning environmental policy; Wilson and Lodge on post-World War I Americzn foreign policy; Hoover pitted agaiast Roosevelt over the welfare state; Oppenheimer vs. Teller concerning nuclear weaponry; Truman and MacArthur and the Korean War; the Nixon vs. Ellsburg dispute over the Pentagon Papers; Freidan against Schafly on ERA; and, finally, O'Connor and Thomas about affirmative action. To read these excellent essays on such ground-shaking, momentous matters reminds us that deep-seated conflict has been a mainstay of American society. We are a people of conflict, but as long as we continue to openly debate that which divides us, relying on the power of ideas and words, not force and violence, we reaffirm our basic consensus that our democratic nation can, indeed must, endure. In that sense, Broesamle and Arthur's underlying message is a positive and reassuring one. More troubled and divided today over policies at home and abroad than memory records, the nation's very future appears clouded. The past and detached analysis often serve to provide needed perspective to a disturbed and distracted people. With their first-rate volume, Broesamle and Arthur provide us with that much-needed succor. They are to be thanked and congratulated. Paul A. C. Koistinen Emeritus Professor of History