Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy Radicals

G&R Episode 96: The New Left (Part III), Remembering Walter LaFeber

Jul 1, 2021

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In our third episode of our ongoing conversation about the New Left, we pay tribute to the memory of the great New Left historian Walter LaFeber of Cornell University.

We talked about the historical importance of the New Left, especially in the study of U.S. foreign relations, the so-called Wisconsin School, William Appleman Williams and others, and then discussed Professor LaFeber's contribution as one of the most important historians of the modern era. We talked about his work on the Spanish American War (The New Empire); The Cold War (America, Russia, and the Cold War); the historical background to the Reagan wars in Central America (Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America); Asia and the Open Door (The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History); Globalization (Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism); and Vietnam (The Deadly Bet: LBJ, Vietnam, and the 1968 Election).