Earlier than he turned well-known as Mr. Limbaugh’s bête noire, Dr. Nash was extensively considered a number one determine in so-called New Left historical past, which rejected the self-discipline’s conventional concentrate on elites because the movers of historical past in favor of on a regular basis individuals.
His guide “Pink, White and Black: The Peoples of Early America” (1974), for instance, appeared on the colonial period by way of the eyes of Native People, working-class whites, and free and enslaved Black individuals.
Although he spent the remainder of his life in Los Angeles, Dr. Nash remained keen on Philadelphia and infrequently used his native metropolis for example his man-on-the-street method. In “The City Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution” (1979), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, he checked out how shifting political concepts amongst sailors, dockworkers and different working-class individuals in Philadelphia — in addition to in Boston and New York — performed a vital function within the motion for independence.
“He modified the main target of what individuals did from the usual research of ideology and concepts to actions on the bottom by on a regular basis individuals,” Mary Beth Norton, a historian at Cornell College, mentioned in an interview.
Dr. Nash noticed a continuation between his method to historical past and his engagement with modern training and grass-roots politics. After the Watts riots in 1965, he joined a corporation that supported Black entrepreneurs. He labored to desegregate Pacific Palisades, the rich space of Los Angeles the place he lived. And after the college’s Board of Regents fired the Black activist Angela Davis from her job as a sociology professor, Dr. Nash led a school committee in an try and get her rehired.
Although his critics typically tarred him as anti-American — or worse — Dr. Nash insisted that he was optimistic in regards to the nation.
“Should you had been a hard-left historian of the USA, you wouldn’t have written what he did. He was at all times optimistic about the USA,” mentioned Carla Pestana, who studied with Dr. Nash as a graduate scholar and is now chairwoman of the U.C.L.A. historical past division. “He thought the true story was about extraordinary individuals striving to make the nation higher.”