Revisionism - Bibliography
Barnes, Harry Elmer. The Genesis of the World War: An Introduction to the Problem of War Guilt. New York, 1926. The most influential revisionist book written during the 1920s; most of the themes of later revisionism are suggested here.
Barnes, Harry Elmer, ed. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath. Caldwell, Idaho, 1953. A collection of essays reflecting the various themes of Right revisionists, this is based on minimal research into primary sources; most of the essays were written by nonhistorians.
Beard, Charles A. The Open Door at Home: A Trial Philosophy of National Interest. New York, 1934. An extremely heavy review of American diplomacy since the founding of the Republic and an important influence on Left revisionism, notably William A. Williams.
——. President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Realities. Hamden, Conn., 1948. Beard's controversial study of the background to Pearl Harbor, based principally on the hearings and reports of the congressional committee investigating Pearl Harbor in 1945.
Bernstein, Barton J. "American Foreign Policy and the Origins of the Cold War." In Barton J. Bernstein, ed. Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration. Chicago, 1970. An important, subtle, and sophisticated radical Left revisionist analysis of the origins of the Cold War.
Borchard, Edwin, and William Potter Lage. Neutrality for the United States. New Haven, Conn., 1937. The most sophisticated and balanced of the revisionist studies published during the 1930s.
Brune, Lester, and Richard Dean Burns. America and the Indochina Wars, 1945–1990. Claremont, Calif., 1992.
Cohen, Warren I. The American Revisionist: The Lessons of Intervention in World War I. Chicago, 1967. A thoughtful, often insightful study of the more important revisionist writing about U.S. involvement in both world wars.
Doenecke, Justus D. The Literature of Isolationism: A Guide to Non-Interventionist Scholarship, 1930–1972. Colorado Springs, 1972. A useful annotated bibliography of the various articles, essays, books, and dissertations on the general theme of revisionism.
Engelbrecht, H. C., and F. C. Hanighen. Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry. New York, 1934. A popular book that provides impetus and a rationale for the so-called Nye Committee investigation of the munitions industry.
Fordham, Benjamin. Building the Cold War Consensus: The Political Economy of U.S. National Security Policy, 1949–1951. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1998.
Gardner, Lloyd C. Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941–1949. Chicago, 1970. A series of portraits of the important foreign policymakers of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, written from a radical Left revisionist perspective.
Herz, Martin. The Prestige Press and the Christmas Bombing, 1972. Washington, D.C., 1980.
Hogan, Michael. A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954. Cambridge and New York, 1998.
Hogan, Michael, ed. America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations Since 1941. Cambridge and New York, 1995.
Kirkendall, Richard S., ed. The Truman Period as a Research Field: A Reappraisal, 1972. Columbia, Mo., 1974. A balanced study of the literature on the Truman period that contains counterbalancing essays on domestic and foreign policy written by revisionists and nonrevisionists; an excellent source on the more important studies and on research collections.
Kolko, Gabriel. The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy. New York, 1968.
Kolko, Gabriel, and Joyce Kolko. The Limits of Power: The World and the United States Foreign Policy, 1945–1954. New York, 1972. An ambitious, heavily written and researched radical Left revisionist study of the diplomacy of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations that depicts American policy as counterrevolutionary and imperialistic.
Kubek, Anthony. How the Far East Was Lost. Chicago, 1963.
Leffler, Melvyn. A Preponderance of Power. Stanford, Calif., 1992.
Lewy, Guenter. America in Vietnam. New York, 1978.
——. The Cause That Failed: Communism in American Political Life. New York, 1990.
Lind, Michael. Vietnam, the Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict. New York, 1999.
Millis, Walter. Road to War: America, 1914–1917. Boston, 1935.
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. Secrecy: The American Experience. New Haven, Conn., 1998.
Olson, James S., ed. The Vietnam War: Handbook of the Literature and Research. Westport, Conn., 1993.
Paterson, Thomas G. Soviet-American Confrontation: Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War. Baltimore, 1973. An important Left revisionist study of the Cold War that reflects the evolution of Cold War revisionism away from the earlier, more exclusively economic analyses of Kolko and Williams.
Paterson, Thomas G., and Robert J. McMahon, eds. The Origins of the Cold War. 4th ed. Boston, 1999. Reprints excerpts and offers insightful commentary on the historiographical debate over the origins of the Cold War and the changes in Left revisionism; there is, however, no critical assessment to date on national security revisionism.
Peterson, H. C. Propaganda for War. Norman, Okla., 1939.
Podhoretz, Norman. Why We Were in Vietnam. New York, 1978.
Schlesinger, Arthur. The Imperial Presidency. Boston, 1973.
Siracusa, Joseph. The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. New York, 1999.
Sorley, Lewis. A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. New York, 1999.
Summers, Harry. On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. Novato, Calif., 1982.
Tansill, Charles Callan. America Goes to War. Boston, 1938.
——. Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933–1941. Chicago, 1952. Relatively distinctive studies of the origins of the world wars, valuable principally because they reflect the changed focus and themes of Right revisionism.
Theoharis, Athan. Spying on Americans: Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Huston Plan. Philadelphia, 1978.
Theoharis, Athan, ed. A Culture of Secrecy. Lawrence, Kans., 1998.
Tucker, Robert W. The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy. Baltimore, 1971. A thoughtful critique of Left revisionist writings on the Cold War, principally focusing on the theories, not the research, of the revisionists.
Van Slyck, Philip. Strategies for the 1980s: Lessons of Cuba, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Westport, Conn., 1981.
Wang, Jessica. American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and the Cold War. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999.
Williams, William Appleman. The Great Evasion. Chicago, 1964.
——. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Rev. ed. New York, 1972. One of the most important books written about American diplomacy, this covers the period since the founding of the Republic and has shaped the thinking and research of the Left revisionist historians.