ISBN Grand Expectations ( The United States 1945-1974 ) 880 pages English

Beginning in 1945 America rocketed through a quarter-century of extraordinary economic growth experiencing an amazing boom that soared to unimaginable heights in the 1960s. At one point in the late 1940s American workers produced 57 percent of the planet's steel 62 percent of the oil 80 percent of the automobiles. The U.S. then had three-fourths of the world's gold supplies. English Prime Minister Edward Heath later said that the United States in the post-War era enjoyed the greatest prosperity the world has ever known. It was a boom that produced a national euphoria a buoyant time of grand expectations and an unprecedented faith in our government in our leaders and in the American dream—an optimistic spirit which would be shaken by events in the '60s and '70s and particularly by the Vietnam War. Now in Grand Expectations James T. Patterson has written a highly readable and balanced work that weaves the major political cultural and economic events of the period into a superb portrait of America from 1945 through Watergate. Here is an era teeming with memorable events—from the bloody campaigns in Korea and the bitterness surrounding McCarthyism to the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King to the Vietnam War Watergate and Nixon's resignation. Patterson excels at portraying the amazing growth after World War II—the great building boom epitomized by Levittown (the largest such development in history) and the baby boom (which exploded literally nine months after V-J Day)—as well as the resultant buoyancy of spirit reflected in everything from streamlined toasters to big flashy cars to the soaring butterfly roof of TWA's airline terminal in New York. And he shows how this upbeat can-do mood spurred grander and grander expectations as the era progressed. Of course not all Americans shared in this economic growth and an important thread running through the book is an informed and gripping depiction of the civil rights movement—from the electrifying Brown v. Board of Education decision to the violent confrontations in Little Rock Birmingham and Selma to the landmark civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965. Patterson also shows how the Vietnam War—which provoked LBJ's growing credibility gap vast defense spending that dangerously unsettled the economy and increasingly angry protests—and a growing rights revolution (including demands by women Hispanics the poor Native Americans and gays) triggered a backlash that widened hidden rifts in our society rifts that divided along racial class and generational lines. And by Nixon's resignation we find a national mood in stark contrast to the grand expectations of ten years earlier one in which faith in our leaders and in the attainability of the American dream was becoming shaken. Grand Expectations is the newest volume in the prestigious Oxford History of the United States. The earlier releases were highly acclaimed and one Battle Cry of Freedom was both a New York Times bestseller and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Patterson's volume takes its rightful place beside these distinguished works. It is a brilliant summation of the years that created the America that we know today a time of setbacks amid unmatched and lasting achievements.