Twentieth Century United States History

Historical writing about the United States in the twentieth century has mushroomed over the years, reflecting great interest among American readers and students in books concerned with the recent past. University courses concerned with twentiethcentury American life are frequently very large and rely on a wealth of sources—not only books and articles but also published and unpublished archival materials, films, documentaries, recordings, statistical information, and oral accounts—that have enabled scholars to explore a wide range of issues and historical controversies.
Although it is difficult to generalize about so vast a domain of inquiry, a few tentative observations may be useful at the start.

The first is that most historians teaching and researching in this field are comfortable with a scheme of periodization that accepts the years around 1900 as pivotal in various ways: teaching courses on twentieth-century American history makes sense to them (though books and articles dealing with the period since 1975 or so are short in archival sources and lack historical perspective). Historical writing about the United States in the twentieth century has mushroomed over the years, reflecting great interest among American readers and students in books concerned with the recent past.

University courses concerned with twentiethcentury American life are frequently very large and rely on a wealth of sources—not only books and articles but also published and unpublished archival materials, films, documentaries, recordings, statistical information, and oral accounts—that have enabled scholars to explore a wide range of issues and historical controversies.

Although it is difficult to generalize about so vast a domain of inquiry, a few tentative observations may be useful at the start.

The first is that most historians teaching and researching in this field are comfortable with a scheme of periodization that accepts the years around 1900 as pivotal in various ways: teaching courses on twentieth-century American history makes sense to them (though books and articles dealing with the period since 1975 or so are short in archival sources and lack historical perspective).