John Page Dr. Clemmer HP 4303 Birth of Modern America 5 November 2015 Voices of Protest: Alan Brinkley Alan Brinkley specializes in the history of the twentieth-century America at the University of Columbia. Brinkley earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1971, and then continued to earn his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1979. He has studied in the field of history and has been a professor for the past thirty years. Alan Brinkley has been awarded various prizes and honors throughout his successful career. He like John Milton Cooper Jr. was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his work of The Publisher. Alan Brinkley has written a total of seven books in his career, along with several articles, essays, and published …show more content…
“Long and Coughlin were flamboyant, charismatic personalities,” says Brinkley (Brinkley 143). Alan Brinkley believes it was not how they presented it, but the overall content that captivated America through the use of media. In numerous ways, Huey Long and Father Coughlin are enigmatic figures. They both were devoted to a vision of only a middle class, but desired to confine the lavish leftovers of capitalist government and accretion of prosperity (Brinkley 145). Father Coughlin and Huey Long both thought that the government was the only way to manage the wealthy. They constantly attacked Roosevelt and the New Deal, saying he was not doing enough in a time that America needed him to be a …show more content…
Brinkley expresses this thought through the personalities of Long and Coughlin. The subject matter is familiar, but with Alan Brinkley’s style he keeps the reader engaged. The book can excite the history scholar or the casual reader who wants to learn more about this time period. Alan Brinkley analyzes the impact messages of Long and Coughlin despite a limited number of written records. This is a truly remarkable feat and Brinkley does an amazing job with the little evidence he has to go off of, but this can create a problem. The disconnection of historical main text and what Brinkley wants to make of it can create bias. It opens up the question of, “What were these two men truly like?” We as the reader only have Brinkley interpretations to go off of and even though he is highly qualified, it can still leave questions to be asked. Voices of Protest nevertheless is a great read with a unique style to retell the time of The Great Depression through the eyes of Huey Long and Father