A portion of a mural, “The Meaning of Social Security,” by Ben Shahn at the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in Washington, D.C. Image: Library of Congress
Ben is currently working on two book projects. The first, titled Island of Enterprise: The United States in a World of Welfare, 1940 – 1955 (forthcoming from Princeton University Press) traces connections between the end of New Deal reformism, the rise of U.S. global power, and the birth of social and economic rights and the modern welfare state around the world in the mid-twentieth century. His second book is a major reevaluation of the “War on Poverty” in the 1960s, viewing it as a political-economic response to the manpower imperatives of racial capitalism, the Cold War national security state, and the unfolding conflict in Vietnam.
Ben’s academic writings are in print or forthcoming from the Journal of Transatlantic Studies, the Radical History Review, Diplomatic History, and the Journal of American History.