Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 by James T. Patterson Read Free Book Online Page A

rights-consciousness that had mushroomed since 1945. Demands for rights, sharply whetted during the previous decades, remained as enduring legacies of the postwar era. But popular uneasiness about the economy did more than any other development of the 1970s to dull the extraordinary optimism that had peaked in the mid-1960s. Therein lay a central feature of the more somber culture that emerged after 1974: rising tension between still grand expectations on the one hand and unyielding social divisions, traditional beliefs, and economic uncertainty on the other. From the early 1970s to our own times Americans have displayed an often rancorous disillusion. Much of the older optimism has abated. We live in a more troubled and often more contentious society.
    Providence, R.I.
October 1995
    Jim Patterson

Acknowledgments

    Many people have helped to make this book possible. I am grateful first to the expert staff of the Brown University History Department: Camille Dickson, Cherrie Guerzon, Karen Mota, and Fran Wheaton, who handled my many requests—especially concerning printing, copying, and mailing—with efficiency and good humor. Several graduate students in the History Department served expertly as research assistants and critics of earlier drafts. They are Lucy Barber, James Sparrow, David Witwer, and Bernard Yamron, who also expertly compiled the index. Larry Small, a Brown undergraduate at the time, proved to be an outstanding research aide as a summer intern. India Cooper was a first-rate copy editor and Joellyn Ausanka provided excellent additional editorial assistance. Andrew Albanese, assistant editor of the Oxford University Press, ably took charge of many important matters, including photographs and maps, and shepherded the manuscript through its many stages of production.
    The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded me a fellowship which enabled me to take time off from teaching and work full time at research. My thanks to the center, and especially to Michael Lacey, its Director of United States Studies, who gave me enthusiastic support and many good ideas. Brown University also provided important research assistance.
    Several scholars who are authorities about aspects of postwar United States history offered discerning comments on earlier drafts of the book. They include James Giglio, George Herring, Townsend Ludington, Charles Neu, David Patterson, John Rowett, Luther Spoehr, and William Stueck. Alan Brinkley and Alonzo Hamby read large portions of the manuscript, greatly improving it in the process. I am especially grateful to my friends and fellow historians John Dittmer, Steven Gillon, and David Kennedy, each of whom read the entire manuscript, covering it with acute observations and criticisms. C. Vann Woodward, general editor of the Oxford History of the United States, and Sheldon Meyer, senior vice-president of the Press, also read every word and saved me from more blunders than I care to remember. I thank finally my wife, Cynthia, whose constant encouragement enabled me to carry the book through to completion.
    J. T. P.

Editor's Introduction

    The writing of recent history surely needs no defense. A few historians may shy away from the present as venturing too close to the brink of the future, but James T. Patterson, author of this volume in The Oxford History of the United States , is clearly not one of them. He might, had he felt the need for it, have cited the precedent set by Thucydides, father of the profession, who wrote the history of his own times. A special need is served by the historian who addresses the recent past, since it is one of the favorite breeding places of mythology. That is particularly true of the period treated in this volume.
    The three decades following the Second World War were prolific breeders of myth. The two great military victories on opposite sides of the globe, followed by unparalleled prosperity at home and world leadership abroad, bred a national