The Proud Decades: America In War And Peace, 1941-1960

This well-written cultural, political, economic and diplomatic survey emphasizes the continuity between World War II and the cold war in American life and deals with the accomplishments that made Americans proud. "The nuclear legacy," argues Diggins, "is perhaps the one permanent aspect of the forties and fifties that cannot be pointed to with pride." This is history for the comfortable, college-educated middle class. Those outside the mainstream are given little heed.