The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good
A sweeping and path-breaking history of the post–World War II decades, during which an activist federal government guided the country toward the first real flowering of the American Dream.

In The Gifted Generation, historian David Goldfield examines the generation immediately after World War II and argues that the federal government was instrumental in the great economic, social, and environmental progress of the era. Following the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation, the returning vets and their children took the unprecedented economic growth and federal activism to new heights. This generation was led by presidents who believed in the commonwealth ideal: the belief that federal legislation, by encouraging individual opportunity, would result in the betterment of the entire nation. In the years after the war, these presidents created an outpouring of federal legislation that changed how and where people lived, their access to higher education, and their stewardship of the environment. They also spearheaded historic efforts to level the playing field for minorities, women and immigrants. But this dynamic did not last, and Goldfield shows how the shrinking of the federal government shut subsequent generations off from those gifts.

David Goldfield brings this unprecedented surge in American legislative and cultural history to life as he explores the presidencies of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon Baines Johnson. He brilliantly shows how the nation's leaders persevered to create the conditions for the most gifted generation in U.S. history.

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The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good
A sweeping and path-breaking history of the post–World War II decades, during which an activist federal government guided the country toward the first real flowering of the American Dream.

In The Gifted Generation, historian David Goldfield examines the generation immediately after World War II and argues that the federal government was instrumental in the great economic, social, and environmental progress of the era. Following the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation, the returning vets and their children took the unprecedented economic growth and federal activism to new heights. This generation was led by presidents who believed in the commonwealth ideal: the belief that federal legislation, by encouraging individual opportunity, would result in the betterment of the entire nation. In the years after the war, these presidents created an outpouring of federal legislation that changed how and where people lived, their access to higher education, and their stewardship of the environment. They also spearheaded historic efforts to level the playing field for minorities, women and immigrants. But this dynamic did not last, and Goldfield shows how the shrinking of the federal government shut subsequent generations off from those gifts.

David Goldfield brings this unprecedented surge in American legislative and cultural history to life as he explores the presidencies of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon Baines Johnson. He brilliantly shows how the nation's leaders persevered to create the conditions for the most gifted generation in U.S. history.

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The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good

The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good

by David Goldfield
The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good

The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good

by David Goldfield

Hardcover

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Overview

A sweeping and path-breaking history of the post–World War II decades, during which an activist federal government guided the country toward the first real flowering of the American Dream.

In The Gifted Generation, historian David Goldfield examines the generation immediately after World War II and argues that the federal government was instrumental in the great economic, social, and environmental progress of the era. Following the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation, the returning vets and their children took the unprecedented economic growth and federal activism to new heights. This generation was led by presidents who believed in the commonwealth ideal: the belief that federal legislation, by encouraging individual opportunity, would result in the betterment of the entire nation. In the years after the war, these presidents created an outpouring of federal legislation that changed how and where people lived, their access to higher education, and their stewardship of the environment. They also spearheaded historic efforts to level the playing field for minorities, women and immigrants. But this dynamic did not last, and Goldfield shows how the shrinking of the federal government shut subsequent generations off from those gifts.

David Goldfield brings this unprecedented surge in American legislative and cultural history to life as he explores the presidencies of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon Baines Johnson. He brilliantly shows how the nation's leaders persevered to create the conditions for the most gifted generation in U.S. history.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781620400883
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Publication date: 11/14/2017
Pages: 544
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

David Goldfield is the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He is the lead author of the cornerstone textbook The American Journey, now in its seventh edition, and is the author of many works on Southern history, including Still Fighting the Civil War, Black, White, and Southern, and, most recently, America Aflame. He lives in North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Good Government 1

Part I Crossing the Meridian 17

1 Moving 19

2 Pioneers 30

3 The Plowboy 45

4 To Secure These Rights 64

5 South by North 82

6 The Scarlet Letter 93

7 The Endless Frontier 108

8 "To Hell with Jews, Jesuits, and Steamships!" 121

Part II Settlement 137

9 The Swedish Jew 139

10 The Wheels of Justice 152

11 Yesterday 171

12 Tomorrow 185

13 Steps 199

14 Confidence 215

Part III Gifts 229

15 The Cowboy 231

16 Interlude 249

17 Being Lincoln 262

18 Patrimony 282

19 A Woman's World 301

20 The Great American Breakthrough 319

21 Blood 338

Part IV The Great Regression 357

22 Party Lines 359

23 The Populist Moment 378

24 Stall 398

25 The Color Line 409

26 The Old Country 428

27 The Great Regression 440

Acknowledgments 450

Notes 453

Bibliography 498

Index 512

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