Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (118 page)

Legal developments:
The role of the courts is large in this history. A handy reference to Supreme Court cases is Congressional Quarterly,
Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court
(2d ed., Washington, 1990). A solid survey is Paul Murphy,
The Constitution in Crisis Times
, 1918–1969 (New York, 1972). Blum, and Hill and Jones, cited above, offer knowledgeable commentary on key legal and constitutional developments. Other important sources include Anthony Lewis,
Gideon's Trumpet
(New York, 1964), an incisive treatment of
Gideon
v.
Wainwright
(1963); Richard Kluger,
Simple Justice: The History of "Brown
v.
Board of Education" and Black America's Struggle for Equality
(New York, 1976); J. Harvie Wilkinson,
From "Brown" to "Bakke": The Supreme Court and School Integration
, 1954–1978 (New York, 1979); David Garrow,
Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of "Roe
v.
Wade"
(New York, 1994); and Stanley Kutler,
The American Inquisition: Justice and Injustice in the Cold War
(New York, 1982).

Women:
Here, too, the literature is vast, reflecting the rise of feminism since the 1960s. Betty Friedan,
The Feminine Mystique
(New York, 1963), did much to accelerate the women's movement. The best histories include William Chafe,
The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century
(New York, 1991); and Carl Degler,
At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present
(New York, 1980). See also Susan Hartmann,
The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s
(Boston, 1982); and Rosalind Rosenberg,
Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century
(New York, 1992). More focused accounts are Jo Freeman,
The Politics of Women's Liberation: A Case Study of an Emerging Social Movement and Its Relation to the Policy Process
(New York, 1975); Sara Evans,
Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left
(New York, 1979); Wini Breines,
Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties
(Boston, 1992); Alice Echols,
Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America
, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis, 1989); Cynthia Harrison,
On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945–1968
(Berkeley, 1988); and Janice Radway,
Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature
(Chapel Hill, 1984). Barbara Ehrenreich,
The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment
(New York, 1983), is a spirited collection of feminist essays focusing on the attitudes and behavior of men.

Family/demography/social trends
: I rely heavily throughout the book on the following: Arlene Skolnick,
Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty
(New York, 1991); Landon Jones,
Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation
(New York, 1980); Richard Easterlin,
Birth and Fortune: The Impact of Numbers on Personal Welfare
(New York, 1980); and Randall Collins and Scott Cottrane,
Sociology of Marriage and the Family
(3d ed., Chicago, 1991). See also Elaine Tyler May,
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
(New York, 1988). Books on sexuality include John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman,
Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
(New York, 1988); D'Emilio,
Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States
, 1940–1970 (Chicago, 1983); and Edward Lauman et al.,
The Social Organization of Sexuality
(Chicago, 1994), an attempt to expand on the insights of Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s and 1950s.

Cultural trends:
Two widely read collections of scholarly essays are Richard Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds.,
The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980
(New York, 1983); and Lary May, ed.,
Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War
(Chicago, 1989). The work of Daniel Bell, a sociologist, has had considerable influence; see especially
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
(New York, 1976); and
The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the
1950s (Glencoe, 1960). Other relevant books include Russell Jacoby,
The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe
(New York, 1987); Richard Pells,
The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the
1940s
and
1950s (New York, 1985); Stephen Whitfield,
The Culture of the Cold War
(Baltimore, 1991), an especially perceptive interpretation; and George Lipsitz,
Class and Culture in Cold War America: A Rainbow at Midnight
(New York, 1981). Important contemporary intepretations of social and cultural trends include David Riesman et al.,
The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character
(New Haven, 1950); David Potter,
People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character
(Chicago, 1954); William Whyte,
The Organization Man
(New York, 1956); C. Wright Mills,
The Power Elite
(New York, 1956); Paul Goodman,
Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society
(New York, 1960); and Christopher Lasch,
The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
(New York, 1979). Among many special studies are Bruce Cook,
The Beat Generation
(New York, 1971); James Gilbert, A
Cycle of Outrage: America's Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the
1950s (New York, 1986), which is more wide-ranging than the title suggests; Peter Guralnick,
Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley
(Boston, 1994); and Ed Ward et al.,
Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll
(New York, 1988). Thomas Hine,
Populuxe
(New York, 1986), is a beautifully illustrated, very readable treatment of trends in art, design, and other aspects of popular culture, mainly in the 1950s.

For studies of the
media
and
film,
a good place to start is Baughman,
The Republic of Mass Culture
, noted above. Sources concerning movies include Nora Sayre,
Running Time: Films of the Cold War
(New York, 1982); and Peter Biskind,
Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties
(New York, 1983). Three thoughtful interpretations of the media, especially television, are Todd Gitlin,
The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left
(Berkeley, 1980); Edwin Diamond and Stephen Bates,
The Spot: The Rise of Political Advertising on Television
(Cambridge, Mass., 1993); and Karal Ann Marling, As
Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the
1950s (Cambridge, Mass., 1994). See also Robert Sklar,
Prime-Time America: Life On and Behind the Television Screen
(New York, 1980); Erik Barnouw,
Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of Modern Television
(New York, 1975); John Fiske, ed.,
Understanding Popular Culture
(Boston, 1989); and Fiske,
Television Culture
(London, 1987). A much-discussed contemporary work is Marshall McLuhan,
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
(New York, 1964).

Sports
and popular culture are the subject of Richard Davies,
America's Obsession: Sports and Society Since
1945 (Ft. Worth, 1994); and Randy Roberts and James Olson,
Winning Is the Only Thing: Sports in America since 1945
(Baltimore, 1989).

Although
environmental history
is a relatively young field, several good books inform my treatment of the subject. See Michael Lacey, ed.,
Government and Environmental Politics: Essays on Historical Developments Since World War Two
(Washington, 1989); Samuel Hays,
Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States
, 1955–1985 (New York, 1987); William McKibben,
The End of Nature
(New York, 1989); and John McCormick,
Reclaiming Paradise: The Global Environmental Movement
(Bloomington, Ind., 1989). Donald Worster,
Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West
(New York, 1985), is an environmentalist call to arms. Rachel Carson,
Silent Spring
(New York, 1962) is in many ways the bible for American environmentalists.

The books mentioned below indicate the sources that helped me the most in my chronologically organized approach to the events of the postwar era.

The late 1940s and Harry Truman:
A sprightly, thoughtful interpretation of the postwar mood is Joseph Goulden,
The Best Years
, 1945–1950 (New York, 1976). Alan Brinkley,
The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War
(New York, 1995), sets the stage for liberal ideas in the postwar era. Michael Lacey, ed.,
The Truman Presidency
(Washington, 1989), includes first-rate essays on aspects of the Truman years. Alonzo Hamby,
Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism
(New York, 1973), is an outstanding treatment of the subject. Robert Donovan's two volumes,
Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–1948
(New York, 1977), and
The Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman
, 1949–1953 (New York, 1982), are solid accounts. David McCullough,
Truman
(New York, 1992), is a well-written biography. Robert Ferrell,
Harry S. Truman and the Modern American Presidency
(Boston, 1983), also readable, is much briefer. Intelligent special studies include Steven Gillon,
Politics and Vision: The ADA and American Liberalism
, 1947–1985 (New York, 1987); Barton Bernstein, ed.,
Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration
(Chicago, 1970); Maeva Marcus,
Truman and the Steel Seizure Case: The Limits of Presidential Power
(New York, 1977); Allen Matusow,
Farm Policies and Politics in the Truman Administration
(Cambridge, Mass., 1967); William Berman,
The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration
(Columbus, 1970); Donald McCoy and Richard Ruetten,
Quest and Resistance: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration
(Lawrence, 1973); and Ingrid Winther Scobie,
Center Stage: Helen Gahagan Douglas
(New York, 1992). See also James Patterson, Mr.
Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft
(Boston, 1972). For cultural histories of the atomic age, see Paul Boyer,
By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age
(New York, 1985), which carries the story to 1950; and Allan Winkler,
Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom
(New York, 1993), a briefer interpretation that moves beyond the Truman era.

Foreign affairs in the early Cold War years:
The origins of the Cold War have stimulated a great deal of historiographical controversy. I have tried to fashion an interpretation drawn from varied sources, notably John Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment
, noted above; Gaddis,
The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947
(New York, 1972); and Melvyn Leffler, A
Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War
(Stanford, 1992). Also helpful are Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas,
The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made: Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy
(New York, 1986); Thomas Paterson, ed.,
Cold War Critics: Alternatives to American Foreign Policy in the Truman Years
(Chicago, 1971); Paterson,
On Every Front: The Making of the Cold War
(New York, 1979), a revisionist interpretation; Robert Pollard,
Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950
(New York, 1985); Michael Hogan,
The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe
, 1947–1952(New York, 1987); and Daniel Yergin,
Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State
(Boston, 1977). Other relevant sources include Wilson Miscamble,
George Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy
, 1947–1950 (Princeton, 1992); Gaddis Smith,
Dean Acheson
(New York, 1970); Lloyd Gardner,
Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy
, 1941–1949 (Chicago, 1970), which presents critical essays on individual policy-makers; and Dean Acheson's detailed memoir,
Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department
(New York, 1969).

The Korean War:
Among the many books on the war are Dorothy Foot,
The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict
, 1950–1953 (Ithaca, 1985); Burton Kaufman,
The Korean War: Challenges in Crisis, Credibility, and Command
(Philadelphia, 1986); William Stueck,
The Road to Confrontation: American Policy Toward China and Korea
, 1947–1950 (Chapel Hill, 1981); and Callum MacDonald,
Korea: The War Before Vietnam
(New York, 1986). Military events receive good coverage in Robert Leckie,
Conflict: The History of the Korean War
, 1950–1953 (New York, 1962); and David Rees,
The Limited War
(Baltimore, 1964). Bruce Cumings,
The Origins of the Korean War
(2 vols., Princeton, 1981, 1990), is highly critical of American policies. For General Douglas MacArthur, see D. Clayton James,
The Years of MacArthur
, 1945–1954 (Boston, 1985); and Michael Schaller,
MacArthur: Far Eastern General
(New York, 1989).