Books by William E. Leuchtenburg

Catapulted into national politics by his heroic campaigns to feed Europe during and after World War I, Herbert Hoover - an engineer by training - exemplified the economic optimism of the 1920s. This book assesses Hoover's policies and legacy in the face of one of the darkest periods of American history.

C. Vann Woodward's The Burden of Southern History remains one of the essential history texts of our time. In it Woodward brilliantly addresses the interrelated themes of southern identity, southern distinctiveness, and the strains of irony that characterize much of the South's historical experience.

The American President is a riveting account of the actions of American presidents in the twentieth century from the assassination of McKinley in 1901 to Clinton's last night in office in 2001.

Beginning with Woodrow Wilson and U.S. entry into World War I, The Perils of Prosperity traces the transformation of the United States from an agrarian, isolationist nation into a liberal, industrialized power entangled in foreign affairs in spite of itself. William E. Leuchtenburg shows how the events of this period reflect the conflict between rural and urban attitudes that reached its crisis in the presidential campaign of 1928 and was finally resolved in the aftermath of the economic collapse in 1929.