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Series Introduction Ordinary people make history. They do so in ways that are different from the ways presidents, generals, business moguls, or celebrities make history never- theless, the history of ordinary people is just as profound, just as enduring. Im- migration in the early decades of the 20th century was more than numbers and government policy it was a collective experience of millions of men, women, and children whose political beliefs, vernacular cultural expression, discontent, and dreams transformed the United States. Likewise, during the Great Depres- sion of the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advanced a broad spec- trum of new social policies, but as historians have argued, ordinary Americans “made” the New Deal at the workplace, at the ballot box, on the picket lines, and on the city streets. They engaged in new types of consumer behavior, shifted political allegiances, and joined new, more aggressive trade unions. World War II and the Cold War were more than diplomatic maneuvering and military strategy social upheavals changed the employment patterns, family relations, and daily life of ordinary people. More recently, the rise of the Christian Right in the last few decades is the expression of changing demographics and emerging social movements, not merely the efforts of a few distinct leaders. These examples, which are drawn directly from the volumes in this series, high- light some of the essential themes of social history. Social history shifts the his- torical focus away from the famous and the political or economic elite to issues of everyday life. It explores the experiences ordinary Americans—native-born and immigrant, poor and rich, employed and unemployed, men and women, white and black—at home, at work, and at play. In the process, it focuses new ix