The Interwar Years

In the essay The Possibilities of Politics: Democracy in America, 1877-1917, Robert D. Johnston shows how the period the late-19th century planted the social, political, institutional seeds that grew into modern America. Lisa McGirr takes this a step further, looking at scholarship of the period between the world wars, and finds modern America to be a fully formed reality during this time

Lisa McGirr is professor of history at Harvard University. Her research focuses on politics and social movements in the twentieth century. The author of the award-winning Suburban Warriors: Origins of the New American Right (2001), she is currently working on a book entitled Prohibition and the Making of Modern America.