Allan M. Winkler
Allan Winkler is a professor emeritus of history at Miami University in Ohio. He is the author of The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (1978); Home Front, U.S.A.: America During World War II (1986); Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (1993); and Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Making of Modern America (2006). His most recent book is "To Everything There Is a Season": Pete Seeger and the Power of Song (2009).
FEATURED LECTURE
Recent American History through Folk Song
OAH Lectures by Allan M. Winkler
This lecture begins with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and then traces their impact on a whole generation of folk singers: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, Tom Paxton, and others. It includes Winkler playing on his guitar and singing a dozen songs.
This lecture describes Pete Seeger’s life and impact on the folk music movement of the 1950s and 1060s. It includes Winkler playing on his guitar and singing about a dozen of his best-known songs.
This lecture, based on Winkler's book Home Front, U.S.A., describes the enormous changes brought on by World War II and assesses their impact on the years that followed in the United States. It includes the role of women, the impact of minorities, and the development of big government.
This lecture, based on Winklder's short biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, describes FDR's life and New Deal and World War II efforts. Faced with crises – the Great Depression and later the Nazi threat – he changed the way Americans thought about the presidency and their government.
This lecture, based on Winklder's book, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom, outlines the history of the nuclear age, from the Manhattan Project to the present.
In this lecture, Winkler looks at past presidential transitions, where one party took over from another relatively smoothly, and provides context for the dramatically different situation today: Wilson’s assumption of power after TR and Taft FDR taking over from Hoover Ike succeeding Harry Truman Reagan following Jimmy Carter Obama taking over from George W. Bush Even though there were, in each case, significant differences, the transition was smooth, with certain basic values informing the process. Such does not seem to be the case today, and the larger question is Why Not? And what might be the consequences.