By Isabella Genovese
Documenting modern events as recent as the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and Donald Trump’s presidency can help us understand America’s past, says UC Santa Barbara historian Salim Yaqub, who just published his latest book on contemporary U.S. history. “Recent events need to be chronicled and explained,” Yaqub said in a talk earlier this month, hosted by the UCSB Center for Cold War Studies and International History. “They can explain the past as we revisit episodes of U.S. history.”
UC Santa Barbara historian Salim Yaqub recently published his latest book on contemporary U.S. history, Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord: The United States since 1945.
Yaqub’s Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord: The United States since 1945, evaluates American history by identifying patterns in U.S. history, bringing us all the way up to the spring of 2022. The textbook covers the federal government's heightened presence in the private economy, the growth of social media, and citizen movements against racism and gender inequality. “Events come together to show the complex engagement of humans over the last 75 years,” said Yaqub, who directs the Cold War Studies center.
He compared the era of Joseph McCarthy—a senator who in the 1950s led public hearings to expose and blackball communists—to the Trump administration, saying both politicians used fear to rally a base of loyal followers. “Trump’s ascendancy altered our understanding of previous eras and postwar U.S. history,” Yaqub told an audience of UCSB students and faculty. “Going back to the McCarthy era, it all sounded pretty familiar.”
With plenty of other American history textbooks for readers to choose from, Yaqub hesitated when Cambridge University Press invited him to write the book in 2017. “There are really excellent overviews of U.S. history since 1945,” the history scholar told his audience. “At first I was very reluctant. I wasn’t sure that [the book] was really needed.”
But, with an opportunity to document events as recent as the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Yaqub decided he could provide a “fresh look” at modern America and eagerly tackled the project. “I realized that there were some contributions I could make,” said Yaqub. “The challenge would be exciting.”
At 500 pages, the book tested Yaqub’s ability to be comprehensive yet succinct in covering America’s past 75 years. “One challenge I faced was trying to fit all this history in a somewhat manageable volume,” Yaqub said. “That’s three quarters of a century. I had a lot of material to cover.”
Yaqub determined that writing multi-themed chapters—as opposed to isolating each topic—was the best strategy to capture the political, cultural, and socioeconomic attributes of American history. “One way of achieving comprehensiveness was by cramming all kinds of different themes and insights into single chapters,” said Yaqub. “Nearly every chapter encompasses a wide range of subjects: politics, foreign relations, economics, culture, and so on.”
When writing his new book, Salim Yaqub’s goal was to provide a “fresh look” at modern America.
Each chapter begins with a historically relevant vignette—or an anecdotal excerpt—that aims to provide context to a time period with a captivating narrative of a person or event. “One thing I did to engage the reader and make the text more inviting was to employ opening vignettes,” said Yaqub.
The book’s first vignette sets the reader in 1946 at the closing of World War II, as the USS Missouri American battleship enters the port of Istanbul bearing the body of Munir Ertegun—Turkey’s ambassador to the U.S.—who died of a heart attack in Washington D.C. The ship was seemingly there to deliver Ertegun’s remains, but because it was the vessel on which Japanese officials had formally surrendered to the Allied powers, its delivery was an assertion of power toward the Soviet Union. “The Missouri’s appearance in Istanbul harbor sent a warning message to Moscow,” said the historian.
The story continues with Ambassador Ertegun’s 23-year-old son Ahmet Ertegun, who stayed in the U.S. and pursued a passion for blues and jazz music—forming Atlantic Records, pioneering new recording techniques, and helping to create a market for Black performers. Ertegun’s production of rhythm and blues music embodied postwar American anti-racist activism through his support of Black musicians.
“Ertegun’s biography—though hardly typical—reflected circumstances that told the story of the nation as a whole in the decades after 1945,” Yaqub said. It demonstrated unprecedented American power and prosperity in the 20th century, he added.
Yaqub drew parallels between the AIDS and coronavirus health crises that, while far apart on the timeline, each sparked controversy in the federal government’s efforts to release a drug or vaccine. When the AIDS epidemic erupted in the 1980s, ACT UP—an activist group formed to address the disease—was insistent that the federal government promptly release a medication, but public servants such as Anthony Fauci were hesitant to hurriedly approve a drug that could be harmful, Yaqub said. “The outbreak of COVID-19 shed an eerie and retrospective light on the outbreak of AIDS in the 80s,” Yaqub said, presenting a parallel to the recent pandemic’s pro versus anti-vaccine conflict. “You had this really bitter clash between two contending parties.”
Yaqub said he attempted to include various viewpoints of each issue, especially those falling on opposing sides of the political spectrum, such as those who subscribed to Trump’s platform and those who rejected it. “I’m sure there are places where people detect a point of view, maybe even bias,” Yaqub conceded. “But I make sure to at least explain the outlooks of the main actors in any particular drama.” He sought to inform readers about why groups or leaders behave a certain way, emphasizing that each action has a driving mindset.
Students who attended the talk said Yaqub sparked their interest in the book’s 75-year perspective. “His book contains so much history and such a vast range of topics…I’ll definitely be reading it,” said one student.
The textbook was crafted for college students, but Yaqub anticipates that it will appeal to adults reading for pleasure. “The primary audience is upper division undergraduates. I’m hoping that a lot of teachers will choose to assign it in classes,” said Yaqub. “But I also hope that reasonably well educated—not expert—adult readers will find it a good book to read and learn more about U.S. history.”
Isabella Genovese is a third year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Global Studies and Environmental Studies. She covered this event for her Digital Journalism course.