A comprehensive introduction to the culture of progressive movements in the United States.

"An extraordinarily ambitious effort of synthesis, worthy of comparison with the synthesis attempted a decade ago by Fredric Jameson's "The Political Unconscious." This book speaks in a fresh voice, a voice that clearly knows all of the most interesting thinking on the politics of culture over the past few years yet is stimulated rather than burdened by its knowledge. It will be welcomed with exhilaration by the large and ever-increasing audience for the theory and practice of cultural studies as well as, I'm convinced, by an unusually broad general readership. No one thinking about the complex relations between aesthetics and politics will be able to ignore it."--Bruce Robbins, editor of "Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics, Academics"

"This new edition of T. V. Reed's acclaimed classic offers accounts of ten key progressive movements in postwar America, from the African American struggle for civil rights beginning in the 1950s to Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter in the twenty-first century. Reed focuses on the artistic activities of these movements to frame progressive social change and its cultural legacies."--Back cover.