A Fine Paradox: America since 1890 by Jeansonne

A Fine Paradox: America since 1890 by Jeansonne

About the author

Glen Jeansonne has taught twentieth-century American history at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Williams College, the University of Michigan, and since 1978, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has won two Teaching Awards and a University Research Award. His twenty-two grants and fellowships include a fellowship from the John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. (Maidment, Mitchell, 2000)

Jeansonne has fourteen books in print or in press, among them A Time of Paradox: America Since 1890; Women of the Far Right; Messiah of the Masses: Huey P. Long and The Great Depression; Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate; and Transformation and Reaction: America, 1921-1945. Gerald L. K. Smith won the Wisconsin Writer's Award for Best Academic Book, the Gustavus Meyers Award for research related to bigotry, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He is now writing a study of Herbert Hoover.

Jeansonne has published over sixty scholarly and popular articles and 150 reviews. He edits two book series and was Associate Editor of Louisiana's state journal, Louisiana History. In 2001, he was elected a Lifetime Fellow of the Louisiana Historical Association. He has participated in television documentaries about Leander H. Perez, Huey P. Long, and Herbert Hoover. (Maidment, Mitchell, 2000) Jeansonne has two daughters, Leah and Hannah. He enjoys music, spectator sports, outdoor beauty, current events, and the study of religion.

David Luhrssen

David Luhrssen has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and Milwaukee Area Technical College. He has lectured at Marquette University, Beloit College, and Concordia University. Luhrssen is co-author with Glen Jeansonne of A Time of Paradox: America Since 1890, and Searching for Rock and Roll with Martin Jack Rosenblum, a contributor to Women and War and The International Discography of the New Wave. He has been published in Historically Speaking, History Today, the Journal of American History, the Wisconsin Academy Review, and other journals. (Maidment, Mitchell, 2000)

Luhrssen received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at UW-Milwaukee.

Luhrssen is also Arts & Entertainment Editor and Film Critic of Milwaukee's weekly newspaper, the Shepherd Express. He has written about music, film, culture, and books for Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, the Milwaukee Journal, Op, New York Rocker, Trouser Press, and other publications. He is also a regular commentator on film for Milwaukee's affiliate.

What is the author trying to address

Paradox is historians' trump card. Once analysis fails, we resort to using this convenient, appropriately vague term, which allows us to retreat with dignity without wholly acknowledging defeat. Paradox rarely is an intended or desired outcome of our analyses. (Maidment, Mitchell, 2000) Not so for Glen Jeansonne's new book, A Time of Paradox: America since 1890. The book operates in reverse order. Jeansonne, assisted by his coauthor, David Luhrssen, makes paradox the book's central motif, utilizing the term as a methodological tool.

In this highly interpretative and polemical overview of the twentieth-century United States, a hybrid between a textbook and a big-picture ...