Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

The Oxford History of the United States #10

by James T. Patterson

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 magisterial 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 greatly 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 unmatched achievements and devastating tragedies.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Politics, American, The United States Of America, United States

880 pages, Hardcover

First published April 18, 1996

About the author

James T. Patterson is an American historian, who was the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Brown University for 30 years. He was educated at Harvard University. His research interests include political history, legal history, and social history, as well as the history of medicine, race relations, and education.

Reviews

[CoachJim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the other volumes in this series this book is a broad history of the events in the United States, in this case the years from 1945 to 1974. To dismiss this as just a chronicle of the events would ignore the pertinent discussion the author offers for these events.

As someone who “cut their teeth” on one volume histories covering nearly two hundred years of the events in the United States, this series is a treasure. There are currently eight volumes covering the years from 1763 to 2000. There is one unpublished volume covering the years from 1896 to 1929 which is currently scheduled to be released in November, 2024.

The Vietnam War and Watergate were major events during this period, but those subjects are too large for this review. I plan future readings that deal with these so I will save that discussion for later.

My interest in reading and studying American history is to try and understand how and why our country has grown so polarized. I would like to focus on some of the social trends reported here that gathered strength and that contributed to our current condition. These trends seemed to help answer those questions.

First of all the Great Migration peaked during the 1940s. This brought Black Americans to the northern cites. Here they still confronted white racial prejudice and structural discrimination. This meant that the race question was no longer just a Southern issue, it now became a national issue.

Jointly with that trend was the economic boom following the World War. The massive spending during the war began a boom that continued for twenty some years. The author notes an interesting fact when he describes the Baby Boom that resulted in 3.8 million babies born in 1947 (I was one of them), 3.9 million by 1952 and more than 4 million babies born each year from 1954 to 1964. (Page 76) This drove the economy and continued the economic boom for as all parents know kids are expensive. People were spending money on their families.

The affluence resulting from the economic boom was apparent to more people with the popularity of television and with its commercials and the broadcasting of family shows. This affluence meant that more people had the luxury of secure food and shelter. This led to greater expectations that a better society in which the best of American ideals could be put into practice. That this was something the country could afford led to a “rights-consciousness” where other groups of Americans wanted to share in the prosperity.

Anyone who lived through and remembers the 1960s remembers it as a tumultuous decade with assassinations, riots and protests. The era was also labeled the Age of Aquarius with a new identity that is “blacker, more feminine, more oriental, more emotional. more intuitive, more exuberant—and, just possibly, better than the old one.” Cultural conservatives viewed these changes with disgust. (Page 442) The barriers dividing different classes, regions, genders, and race were threatened. This led to a resentment by “ordinary” people against all the special claims by these various interest groups.

Another trend was the rise of the conservative evangelicals. Speakers like Billy Graham, Oral Roberts and Norman Vincent Peale gave voice and popularized this brand of religion. Later Supreme Court rulings against school prayer, giving women the right to choose to have an abortion, segregated schools, and affirmative action strengthened what would become the religious right. These became attractive issues for Republicans.

In 1952 Eisenhower's Vice-President candidate, Richard Nixon, was revealed to have a private political fund. Forced to defend himself he went on TV in a speech since titled the “Checkers Speech”. This showed the potential power of television that could be used by a candidate to bypass party officials.

White supremacy has been present in this country since the first Africans were brought here. During this period and especially in the 1960s white supremacists became a powerful political force, especially in the Republican Party. Nixon and others found code words to identify Black Americans with problems.

The seeds had been sown to create the polarized, divided country we have become. Trends developed that gave politicians wedge issues that they could use to attract supporters. Television gave them, especially candidates with their own wealth or with wealthy supporters, a way to drive their own campaigns.

I have chosen to focus on a narrow theme of this history. Like others I have become perhaps a little pessimistic about whether our democracy can hold together. Granted the last seven to eight years have changed our perspective. There has been an impression that our society and culture are falling apart. However, the author states that “the United States remained one of the most stable societies in the world. Most Americans still held strongly to long-established values, including commitment to the Constitution, respect for the law, [and] belief in the necessity of equal opportunity.” (page 787) His comment is from 1996 so it is perhaps a bit dated, but we still seem to be holding together.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title accurately identifies the unifying theme of this massive synthetic history. Patterson argues that from the end of World War II through the sad endgame of Watergate, the keynote of American history is economic growth and increased expectations in almost every realm of life: race relations (the civil rights movement), foreign policy (the nation's purported ability to impose its will and/or freedom on the world without necessarily bothering to learn the difference between Venezuela and Vietnam), in personal and group "rights," in material possessions. As with any through argument for an 800-page book, there are places where the dense texture of reality strains the generality, but never in a way that seriously derails the book.

I was reading it part for the information--I'm fairly well grounded in the historical literature Patterson relies on--and partially for insight into how to put together this much material in a single volume With that in mind, a couple of reflections. First, Patterson spends a bit more time than I would on the "great man" approach to history, especially in his emphasis on the personalities and policies of the Presidents from Truman to Nixon. I understand the temptation; they're a near-Shakespearean gallery of character types, as interesting for their failures and limitations as for their successes. But, especially when he reaches the sixties, Paterson lets the social and economic story recede a bit too far into the background. And he's simply not very good on the culture/counterculture of the sixties. I'm going to notice that because it's my own central interest, but like most white historians, he pretty much misses the significance of African American music. That's tied to a more serious limitation, which is his reduction of Black Power to the charismatic leadership; at least as much of its importance has to do with its impact on the everyday life of black people and its huge impact on areas of American culture where it's not obvious. For example, when assessing the legacies of the era, Patterson gives passing attention to the greater realm of personal expression that opened up in the seventies and after, but he doesn't make the connection. That's quibbling over something that's not irrelevant, but also isn't central. Similarly, I'm not entirely satisfied with Patterson's treatment of the rise of feminism or with the New Left, which he associates primarily with SDS. Again, not wrong, just not nuanced enough for my taste. I'd add the rise of the conservative right to the list of things I wished had gotten more attention. We get a cardboard version of Barry Goldwater and almost no attention to what the rightward shift of the GOP during the decade. That's the cost of the time and attention paid to the presidents: not enough attention to some of the events that appear secondary at the time but set the stage for major events later.

On the other hand, the chapters tracking the post-War trials of Truman, Joe McCarthy, Eisenhower carried me along with very few "wait a minute" moments. Probably the biggest change the book created in my sketch of the world concerns Eisenhower, who emerges--convincingly--as a sharper politician and tactician than I'd credited him with. Patterson does a very good job with the cultural shifts of the 50s, the rise of the suburbs, the impact of television. No major problems with his treatment of Vietnam or the mainstream civil rights Movement (though research that wasn't available when he published the book in 1996 would lead to a greater emphasis on women in the movement and a more nuanced notion of Black Power--see the books by Danielle McGuire, Timothy Tyson and Peniel Joseph for follow-up). I'm still thinking about the emphasis he puts on the "Rights Revolution" as the keynote of the late 60s, but it's an intriguing phrasing with much to recommend it.

Like most academic historians, Patterson's much more sympathetic to Kennedy than I am, and I don't think he captures LBJ's complexity adequately. That doesn't keep him from presenting most of the facts that lead me to differing judgements. Can't really ask much more from a book this ambitious. It's rare for a synthetic history to win a Bancroft Prize, but all things considered, Grand Expectations deserved it.

[Joe McCluney · Rating 2 out of 5]

A history at massive scale that somehow feels small. The first part of the book is carried by events I find inherently interesting, but it quickly fizzles out into topical overviews of different presidents and social phenomena. The attempted synthesis isn't novel or insightful (Patterson throwing the phrase "grand expectations" into as many passages as possible with hopes that it might stick was particularly grating to me), and the result is that the book quickly becomes stale, which is disappointing considering its potentially dynamic subject matter.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with some of the other readers that this book in the Oxford series did not have the same "punch" as McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom," for example, but it still was a great survey of this very pivotal period in American history.

It touched upon all the major events, incidents and trends of the era. Patterson took some complicated events that not only had economic and political impact but social ramifications, as well.

Patterson did a great job stressing how Vietnam helped spoil the great expectations that Americans had developed during this era. Vietnam was the number one cause of the economic "stagflation" hat hit the country in the 70s.

It was also disconcerting to read how our Presidents totally disregarded regions of the world because they were to busy worrying about a Worldwide Communist plot that did not exist.

It was also heartbreaking to see how the country divided along class and racial and ethnic lines when it came to civil rights and the war and how politicians used this division to their political advantage.

It's amazing how the post-war period starts with euphoria, "we can do anything" attitude and then ends on a completely different note. This is the story of how the people lost respect, trust and belief in the government and it's institutions.

[Bryan Cebulski]

A great primer on the United States in the middle of the 20th century, though far, far better when discussing federal political history than social or cultural history. Patterson just seems too out of touch in these areas. Like, he describes the Black Panthers as a group of mostly young men looking for something to prove--not wholly WRONG, but paints a way more simplistic picture than anyone who has ever seriously studied the Panthers would ever think appropriate. His descriptions of beat and hippie cultures feel really oddly angled too--at one point he says the beats were mostly apolitical (which, uh, really?), while his descriptions of the hippies are clinical at best.

Surprising how much Nixon ended up feeling marginally vindicated. Like I appreciated that he was game to follow along with the legislation passed by the progressive Congress. Kennedy, on the other hand, comes out looking terrible. The dude didn't even do anything significant!

[Umar Farooq · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very important book to read for any follower of contemporary US politics. The author has done his job immaculately (damn thats a mouthful but could not think of another word right now). The book starts in 1945 with freshly nuked Japan and rather unfriendly Stalin and ends in 1974 with Nixon resigning due to Watergate. In between happens American economic miracle, start of cold war, Korean war, civil rights movement and Vietnam war.
These are defining moments of post WW2 world and we are living very much in the shadow of these colossal events.
The author focuses in depth on the American personalities involved during these times. My favorites are Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy and Nixon. And ofcourse J Edgar Hoover. And Kessinger. All these ambitious men were avid players of high politics juiced up on nuclear fuel. It was intense. One person, Robert McNamara, stands out due to his original thoughts and personality. Other people you will encounter and MacArthur, Eisenhower, Martin Luther King Jr (Great guy, very powerful speaker and tactician) and Malcolm X who gets shot in like three minutes so that all from his side. Well many people get shot in this book. I felt especially bad for Kennedys. Also the women's right movement started during this period and one has to admire those females who overcame sexism even from their own allies. And many more exciting people.
One downside of the book is that Castro, Stalin, Khrushchev and Ho Chi Minh (a phantom not well described in the book but always in the background) are the only non-Americans appearing in the book.
Overall a great read and very relevant today.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant work covering the three decades following WWII, from Truman and the Korean War to Nixon, the end of Vietnam and Watergate. The world we live in begins to become recognizable in these decades. Reading about life prior to WWII is like reading about a world not too different from that of the previous centuries. But its in this time that so much we take for granted today - from air conditioning to mass media - begins to take off.

When I think about the world we live in today, speaking especially about politics, I was of two minds as I read this book. On one hand, it was a reminder that much of what we fight over today, the political battles we are having, are nothing new. We’ve been fighting these same battles for decades. On the other hand, there is a progression of sorts as boundaries that were not crossed in the 60s or 70s are jumped right over today. This was most apparent reading about Nixon and the fact that when he was caught in a crime, he resigned. Compare this to what we’re living through with Trump and the 1/6 hearings - not only did Trump not resign after his crimes and attempt to overthrow the election, he’ll run (and sadly, probably win) in 2024.

Sigh.

Overall, this is a great book for anyone who wants to learn more about American history.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” — Hunter S. Thompson (1972)

The prosperity of the postwar era is sometimes difficult to fathom in our current age of imperial decline. After the war, the United States found itself in a situation unparalleled in world history: essentially untouched by the devastation of the worst war in human history, we controlled nearly half of the world economy with about 4% of its population. Our factories produced immense quantities of goods, our cities expanded with waves of suburbanization, the improvements to our social infrastructure begun by FDR were gradually expanded to incorporate more aspects of life. It is no wonder that many Americans of the period expected perpetual growth and improvement in quality of life.

Nonetheless, great challenges faced us even in these years of abundance. The greatest leader in our history, FDR, lay dead; his successor was an obscure senator from Missouri with 80 days of experience as Vice-President, who had been selected for the job due to political machinations during the wartime 1944 election. Europe and Asia were ruined, with control of their territory split between American/British forces and those of our erstwhile Soviet allies. The old European empires were broken, and their gradual fragmentations created power vacuums around the world. The wartime economy had to pivot as gracefully as possible to an emergent consumer market — no easy feat. And, of course, the country continued to neglect the rights and privileges of a significant number of its citizens, particularly (but not exclusively) in the South.

More than other books in the Oxford series, ‘Grand Expectations’ has a central thesis, one which is implicit in its title. This proves to be both a strength and a hindrance at times: it helps string together an incredibly eventful 3 decade narrative, but also sometimes causes Patterson to overfit his presentation of facts to the central point. Broadly, he argues that the historically unparalleled economic growth and the remarkable success of various programs that expanded rights and privileges led to overweening expectations about what was possible in life, which then deflated sharply, like an overfilled balloon, when they stuck on the major obstacles and disappointments of the late 1960s.

Overall, I think that the thesis is sound and well reasoned. I’m always wary of psychological explanations for historical events, but the psychology proposed here is sound and verifiable by common experience: when we inflate our expectations, we invite disappointment. Since frustrated aspirations are an inevitability in life, the blow is taken harder when there is a further distance to fall for a people who think that the world is their oyster. So it went for Americans of the postwar era: to many, it seemed that the torrent of prosperity would never slow, and that a triumphant America could impose its will on the world. As our national failures grew more apparent, and progress became more costly, the reaction was especially intense. While the push for legal equality was mostly triumphant, the subsequent demands for social and economic equality largely fell flat — the legacies of these latter struggles remain contentious to the present, perhaps because even the best governments can only take them so far.

To my surprise, Patterson casts a cold eye on the run of postwar presidents. He takes great care to show the failures and oversights of each. In accordance with his thesis, he demonstrates how the administration of each postwar president raised public expectations beyond what each government could feasibly accomplish.

Furthermore, each postwar president overestimated American strength abroad and mired us deeper in the type of seedy Cold War foreign policy most clearly exemplified by the Vietnam War. American leaders disastrously overestimated the unity of “world communism” and failed to understand both the fractious internal divisions within the Second World and the importance of post-colonial nationalist movements. Our unreasoning fear of the Soviet Union led us to some boneheaded actions, both domestically and abroad, and Americans are lucky that we escaped much worse outcomes — although, of course, many other countries suffered because of our mistakes.

While I think that Patterson makes a good case, I do suspect that some of his analysis is a product of the 1990s, when the books was written. The 90s saw the neoliberal consensus in full control; they were optimistic in a very different way, more convinced of the transformative power of the market than of government. By then, liberals and leftists of the older variety were endangered, if not quite extinct, and many of the survivors held the 1960s overreach to blame for their exile. The so-called New Left was indeed disastrous and its 1960s excesses led directly, albeit unintentionally, to the rise of Reagan and many of our current predicaments. The optimistic radicalism 60s was predicated on extreme individualism, which is ultimately antithetical to broad and lasting social movements. Americans are living with that legacy even now as we struggle to find a solid foundation to build upon or even simply resist the current erosive forces of ressentiment and revanchism.

So, looking out from amidst the historical trash heap of the 2020s, the accomplishments of the FDR-to-LBJ era may as well be the Five Good Emperors of Roman civilization. They seem so distant and remarkably different from the sordid political deeds of my own lifetime that they look like an ancient golden age. It is hard to imagine a government capable of passing massive legislation that actually helps ordinary citizens, that both expands rights *and* enables their exercise with funding and social infrastructure. I am nearing 40, and I have watched the destruction of most of the beneficial programs built in the postwar era under a run of mostly awful leaders. It is hard not to look wistfully at an LBJ, whose domestic accomplishments make all of his successors look like jokes, or an Eisenhower who led us with a restrained dignity that has mostly vanished from popular life. Whatever their flaws, this run of leaders was probably the best we’ve ever had for average Americans. Patterson is perhaps too critical of them, and I think he sometimes underrates what they built — we see it more clearly now that it is nearly gone.

I’ll close with a passage from ‘Democracy in America’ that identifies one of the tensions that led to the end the era under review — and perhaps remains one of the keys to the present, too:

“If a social state in which law or custom no longer keeps anyone in his place is joined to the taste for material well-being, this too greatly excites further restiveness of spirit: one will then see men change course continuously for fear of missing the shortest road that would lead them to happiness… When inequality is the common law of a society, the strongest inequalities do not strike the eye; when everything is nearly on a level, the least of them wound it. That is why the desire for equality always becomes more insatiable as equality is greater.” — Alexis de Tocqueville

[Aaron Million · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book. Patterson does an excellent job of flushing out all of the disparate groups that came together - and opposed each at various times - to form the Civil Right movement. It seems that today, if Americans think of Civil Rights, they seem only to think of Martin Luther King, Jr. The movement was so much more than him, although obviously he was a great leader who inspired millions of people. Patterson details how the various factions were forced to acknowledge each others' different approaches in order to accomplish their respective missions.

Patterson gives a fair impression of Eisenhower - knocking him, in my opinion rightfully so, for not embracing Civil Rights and being more willing to influence people as only he could during the 1950s.

Patterson also is neutral in his appraisal of Lyndon Johnson - acknowledging that his legislative accomplishments were really exemplary while at the same time he was over-selling his Great Society. And, of course, the disaster of Vietnam.

It is apparent to me that Patterson does not think highly of Truman. He mostly disparages him and leaves one with the impression that he was a bungler and in over his head. On the contrary, I think Truman was a bold leader and, while initially trying to feel his way around after FDR's death, did a great job. He was thrust into an awful situation, without much knowledge of events due to FDR's penchant for keeping everyone in the dark.

Also, another shortcoming is the all-too-brief treatment that Patterson gives to both Kennedy assassinations - especially JFK's. That was a seminal moment and a major turning point in American history. Yet Patterson devotes only a few pages to the event. He could have, and I think should have, gone into much more detail on that tragic occurrence.

All in all, a solid book. This is the third volume that I have read of the Oxford History series; the previous two books were stronger in their subject matter than this one was - with the exception of the Civil Rights discussion.

[Florence Millo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grand Expectations by James Patterson

I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed this history of the United States from the end of World War II to 1974.  I am a baby boomer and this book covers the period of my childhood and youth.  I read the book slowly because I remember so much of the period.  Civil rights, school desegregation,  the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Vietnam, feminism, Watrgate, and Nixon's resignation.  The Cold War and the nuclear arms race.  Wow, it was quite a ride!
Excellent book, well researched, written to be easily read and understood. I am planning to read other books in this Oxford History of the United States series. 

[Piker7977 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grand Expectations is a straightforward history of America's postwar years (1945-1974). Patterson does not have any major surprises as he focuses on how the U.S. had a euphoric optimism, "grand expectations", to accomplish just about anything the country set her mind to. There were a variety of issues that undermined this ideal, perhaps most importantly political polarization, which leave a lasting impression on the reader. While an overall success story, the postwar era was hardly a period of perfection that so many nostalgic and romanticized accounts present.

This is also a good place to gather sources written before 1995. Patterson is very reliant on secondary sources, but many of them look interesting and worth the hunt to find copies.

[Eoin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a really interesting overview of American history for the thirty year period following WWII.
It put a lot of things in context, which is what I probably enjoyed the most. Some things are definitely covered in pretty light detail, but I liked hearing the broader context and demographic details of America throughout each of the events.
Another nice addition to the series.

[siya]

This has been in my CR for two years marking it as read feels more like freedom than even A level results day

[Richard Greene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought this one as part of my read through the Oxford History of the United States. It is the first book in the series that scared me because of the possibility of recency bias - that the events were too close to now for an author to write about. Perhaps it was even a bigger concern because the book was written in the 1990s - about 25 years after the end of its subject matter. I was surprised though. Turned out to be a fairly balanced read, particularly on matters liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican.

Thoughts:

*For all its balance, its heavily secondary sourced, particularly on matters involving Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Suppose the obvious answer is that there were a lot of classified and inaccessible documents involving the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam and Watergate at the time of research and writing.

*Like its predecessor on the Oxford timeline, Freedom from Fear, Grand Expectations centers on Presidential activity, particularly responses to foreign and domestic crises. If the stories of average people are told, it is through their involvement in national crises in race and gender relations, economics, and dissatisfaction with wars.

*Grand Expectations is not just a title for this book. Patterson repeatedly beats the theme home: how Americans’ expectations drove their personal lifestyle decisions and reactions to political and economic problems. In the end, while the prospects of Americans tend to improve financially through the 30-year time period discussed, the outsized expectations Americans had following World War II, left many disappointed by the mid-1970s.

*Really enjoyed the discussion of race and the radicalization of the Civil Rights movement. Came away thinking that the Women’s rights movement did not get enough treatment. Really quick discussions of Griswold and Roe, though I did like reading about the protests at the Miss America pageant.

*On that note...1968...good grief. Makes 2020 seem tame by comparison.

*It’s almost two books. I forget that the beginning is mostly about Truman, Eisenhower, McCarthy and Korea. On a personal note, seems that Patterson agrees that Eisenhower didn’t do much to stop McCarthy’s Red Scare antics - something I concluded from reading another book on the subject. Not to say that Eisenhower liked McCarthy personally.

*Came away from the book skeptical of the ability of federal government to impose meaningful social change, at least immediately. Resistance of both Northern and Southern populations to affirmative action and desegregation destroyed the Democratic coalition that existed under Roosevelt. At the same time, the Warren Court and the Congress that enacted both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 set in place the social norms and expectations that existed long after.

*Same in the economic realm. To some extent, all politicians mentioned, save maybe Eisenhower, are children of FDR. They believed in the ability of federal government to stimulate and maintain the economy through government spending. It appears from reading Patterson, that spending alone can create serious drawbacks - such as the early-1970s’ inflation that resulted from years of military spending.

*Could go on and on. But came away impressed with all the Presidents mentioned for one reason or another. Truman for standing up to McArthur and filling FDR’s huge shoes; Eisenhower for his intervention at Little Rock and handling of the Korean War; Kennedy as an inspiration to many, Johnson for actually accomplishing the social initiatives that Kennedy seems to be credited with; and Nixon for balancing being the last of a socially moderate Republican order with a slick foreign policy that capitalized on the divide between Russia and China and helped bring an end to Vietnam.

*Scandal and ineptitude seemed to compromise the positive achievements of the Presidents in this time and undermine public confidence in government, but I believe at some point or another all these names mentioned gave an honest effort to solve difficult problems - foreign and domestic.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh goody! I've read this book pretty much cover to cover now. Love that description of LBJ stroking his own bust. In fact, his descriptions of all the presidents are very good. A true tour-de-force and with a simple narrative.

Older review:

Skipped a bit here and there, but this kind of book invites that. Patterson's central point was how America had a spirit of optimism after World War II and had "Grand Expectations" for its future which united it. In the sixties and seventies, this broke down, especially with Vietnam.

I remember as a fun, insightful, and thorough history of fairly recent events that perhaps we can begin to look back with a bit more 'hindsight.'

[Nick Harriss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent volume in the Oxford History of America series, taking in the Truman to Nixon years. It has just the right balance of detail and brevity; very much recommended for anybody interested in modern American history.

[Nicholas T-R IV · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book at a very ignorant state in my life which probably inflates my opinion of a most likely mundane historical text.

[Michelle Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a grad school class on Postwar America. It was an excellent overview. I might go back and read the rest of the series after grad school is done.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to via Books-on-Tape.

While faulting Paterson for missing an opportunity to show the intersections of public and private life, to merge popular culture with politics and to place women's lives on an equal footing with men's, Elaine Taylor May still calls it a balanced and moderate account of the first three decades of the post war world. Charles Alexander also sees the account as balanced and "judicious." By starting with a chapter on "Veterans, Ethnics, Blacks and Women," Patterson sets the tone for the rest of the book. which is the account of "grand expectations" excited by the triumph in WWII and buoyed by the remarkable post-war economic boom. It was, as May points out, often the disparity between these grand expectations and the ability of the government to meet these expectations that lead to many of the rights revolution that grew in the land. Rhetoric about American liberty, it would seem, often outstripped the actual commitment of America's leaders to deliver social equality to all regardless of race, ethnicity, class or gender.

In his review for Reviews in American History, Walter Hixson points out some of the key issues which Patterson addresses in putting forward his "grand expectations" thesis. On the Cold War, Patterson finds that it was close to inevitable. Truman may have added to the apocalyptic character of the conflict, but Stalin bears much of the blame. The Korean War, despite many errors along the way was essentially a necessary war to stop North Korean aggression. In line with recent scholarship that revives Ike's powers as a statesman, his assessment of Eisenhower is quite favorable. The Red Scare popularly known as McCarthyism is set in a larger cultural context, with Ike getting a slight chiding for not taking Tail Gunner Joe on earlier in his presidency. He is artfully able to catch the mood of the times for the common folk in pointing to the importance of prosperity, against the critiques of America's self-appointed elites. For people getting their first home, the alienation of the intelligentsia meant little. Yet, he is writing top-down history and there is little in this very think volume of grass roots history. He acknowledges the contribution of grass roots activism to the Civil Rights cause but focus on the national leadership. Ike resisted Brown (1954) believing that his appointment of Earl Warren was the single biggest mistake of his administration. The Kennedy administration was haltingly converted to limited support of civil rights. It was LBJ who emerges as the real champion of social legislation, but he oversold it and fell victim to his own pride. The escalation he pursued in Vietnam was driven by his absolute obsession not to be tagged as the guy who "lost" Vietnam. It is, in Patterson's view, wholly unproductive to engage in the Monday morning quarterback exercise. This was the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy -- as LBJ was to learn. Patterson's critique of Nixon in Vietnam is also insightful. Had Nixon been willing to compromise in 69 he might have gotten instead what he ended up getting in 73. In the end, the economy's slump in the 70s, in combination with the double psychic shocks of Vietnam and Watergate, destroyed the confidence many Americans had in their government and put an end to the "grand expectations" of an era.

Alan Brinkley, in reviewing another of Pattern's books (America's Struggle Against Poverty, 1900-1980) for Reviews in American History, comments on how the welfare state is so late and so light a tax burden in comparison to other western countries but that it still evokes a great deal of anger. In a scant 200 pages, Patterson explains the history of attitudes toward the poor starting with Progressivism, working through the New Deal and bringing the discussion through the War on Poverty and into the present world of "welfare reform." Patterson demonstrates that conservative inhibitions have rendered the American welfare state too small to be effective. In a country where middle class critics of the undeserving poor still dismiss the poor as "loafers" and "bums," conservative attitudes toward the poor have something of a 19th century ring to them. Patterson presents a "vision of a rich and powerful nation creating a modern welfare state almost in spite of itself, of a society stumbling into a commitment it neither understood nor desired."

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the rest of the series this book covers America from various directions. It looks at the top from the various administrations of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. It explores things from the point of view of civil rights leaders such as Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Medgar Evers. The book even takes a look at some of the more extreme activists such as Malcolm X, who was for most of his career a black nationalists and not a believer in equality. The book examines at the sixties counterculture and the famous concert at Woodstock. It also covers the average Americans who were just trying to get along with their lives and who really enjoyed the show 'All in the Family.'

"No performer aroused more alarm than Elvis Presley. Elvis, twenty years old in 1955, was the son of poor Mississippi farm folk who had moved into public housing in Memphis when he was fourteen. HE pomaded his hair and idolized Brando and Dean, whose Rebel Without a Cause he saw at least of dozen times and whose lines he could recite from memory. Presley learned to sing and play guitar while performing with local groups, often with people from his Assembly of God congregation. In 1954, he recorded 'That's All Right' and a few other songs, mainly in the blues and country traditions, thereby exciting Sam Phillips, a local loved black music and had recorded such musicians as B.B. King earlier in the 1950s. But the color line barred them from fame. 'If I could find a white man with a Negro sound,' Phillips is reputed to have said, 'I could make a billion dollars.'" (p.372)

"The civil rights act was nonetheless a significant piece of legislation, far and away the most important in the history of American race relations. Quickly upheld by the Supreme Court, it was enforced with vigor by the State, for there were many thousands of hospitals, school districts, and colleges and universities affected by provisions of the law. Although many southern leaders resisted, most aspects of enforcement proved effective in time, and the seemingly impregnable barriers of Jim Crow finally begin to fall. Black people at last could begin to enjoy equal access to thousands of places that had excluded them in the past. Few laws have such dramatic and heart-warming effects."(p.546)

There are some parts of the book I am very critical of. The book lacks a type of poetic feel that was present in previous volumes such as Gordon Wood's Empire of Liberty and David Kennedy's Freedom From Fear. Also often this book strongly leans to the negative. I am not saying one should not be critical when need be, for example there are several sections in David Walker Howe's What Hath Good Wrote that are very critical at times but nevertheless has a strong sense of wonder. This book very much lacks that at times. The moon landing is barely covered. For thousands of years humans had look at the moon and often worshiped it, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went out and walked on it, and Patterson strongest stance on the matter is: it did not give us as much scientific information than we would have liked. While criticizing President Kennedy's foreign policy--again, nothing wrong with criticizing, especially the Bay of the Pigs disaster--he reduces the entire Peace Corps to just a single sentence. He also feels at times he needs to say something critical every time he says something positive. When discussing Cuban Missile Crisis he feels he needs to balance the positive view of Kennedy's handling of the event view with a more critical one, despite the fact that the critical view's argument is extremely weak. In some ways Patterson's seems to be so caught up in the era's disappointments to appreciative its wonder.

I still highly recommend this book it is very insightful look into to how America was and the American people themselves at the end of World War II to how disappointed they were after the disastrous Vietnam War and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union chilled the air for the entire era as the nation that though it could to anything had to learn its limits. America in this era was a nation of high hopes and great disappointments.

*If the reader was given a hundred dollars every time the words 'grand expectations' came up the reader would probably finish with a few thousand dollars.

[Ray Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a chronology that seems to easily divide itself into two parts: 1945-1960 and 1960-1974.

The theme of the first half is assimilation. A perceived unity and Americanness that united all citizens together into the glow of economic progress after the horrors of the Great Depression and WWII. But there were serpents in Eden. Specifically there were the civil rights movement and an irrational fear of communism.

Blacks obviously knew that they were at the bottom of the social ladder, but the economic progress, march of technology (particularly the rising ubiquity of TVs) and increased job opportunities outside the South made it clear to blacks just how much they were being cut out of the economic boom times.

Eisenhower, due to his unimpeachable patriotic cred, was able to reject the Red paranoia of the 50s, summarily ending the Korean war and keeping the US out of war for the rest of his administration. He even sought to reduce military spending. He was also the kind of conservative that didn’t believe in rocking the boat. So he didn’t do much to dismantle the New Deal or address the issue of civil rights. He even considered his nomination of the activist Chief Judge Warren to be a mistake. So when Eisenhower deployed the 101st Airborne to enforce civil rights in Arkansas, he did so because he had to, not because he believed in the cause.

The 60s, in spite of all the attention grabbing media of the time, were for most Americans a continuation of the 50s only with an even better economy. Neither before or since has the US enjoyed just a booming economy.

This leads to a fascinating situation by the end of the decade. Other groups, seeing the success of the Civil Rights movement (particularly after the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 65) started to mobilize. Women, the poor, the elderly, Hispanics, Native Americans, anti-war protesters, counter-culturalists, environmentalists, and so on. Interestingly it seems the economic progress of the US gave people sufficient wealth and leisure time to advocate for causes they believed in.

The problem here is these various threads were rarely pulling in the same direction. Combined with the increasing chaos — Vietnam and the government’s lies about it, race riots, demonstrations on college campuses, etc. — there was a backlash from the white working class who didn’t consider themselves to be a part of any of these movements, and yet felt like these movements overshadowed their interests.

In 1968 LBJ decided not to run, MLK and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, the DNC was a shambles, and Nixon won the presidential election. The author describes Nixon as the most liberal Republican president since Teddy Roosevelt. He was largely happy to let the Democratic congress do what it wanted, reap the political benefits of social legislation, and instead focus on foreign relations. But Nixon did not shore up the divisions that were wracking America. He felt his reelection depended on social discontent. So he poured gasoline on the fire and fueled the grievances of the white working class whom he sought to court away both from the Democratic party and segregationists like Wallace. He even started rolling back Civil Rights protections.

The author describes an arc in American sentiment. It starts with limitless expectations for the future in the wake of WWII. Americans were living in a world that would have seemed like science fiction in the 30s. An end to war, poverty, and disease seemed within grasp. By the fall of Nixon, the American people were much more jaded and cynical. The US was a different country.

[Alec · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the subtitle of the book suggests, this covers the roughly 30-year period following the end of World War II. The cultural and societal changes over this period make the book quite interesting. The comparison of the "average" life of Americans during this period is also a fascinating study. I appreciated the common themes Mr. Patterson covered as the book progressed, from the political landscape, to economic issues, from cultural (pop and otherwise), to technology. It was a very interesting way to cover an eventful three decades.

I assume many of the events in this period of American history are familiar to most of the readers of this book, whether that be through direct experience or through the experiences of their parents/grandparents. This is the first of the books I'd described as happening within "living memory" and as a result, it was interesting to get a different (he'd probably argue it to be as unbiased as possible) view on things that I've heard about through different lenses. Some people or events took on a less rosy tint as I read and others were perhaps more remarkable or noteworthy than I initially thought them to be. In this, I consider Mr. Patterson's work a success.

Of particular note was how he navigated the theme of race relations during this period. Much changed from a legal standpoint, by the end it even feels like some things are changing from a societal standpoint as well. I thought Mr. Patterson did a good job of stripping away some of the myth surrounding key figures (to the benefit of some and the detriment of others). It was interesting to see (or realize) the political motivations behind some of the actions and to realize certain legislation (much touted) had less teeth than I understood. It was heartening as well, to see the courage, bravery, and persistence of many involved in pushing for real change. If my rating for the period immediately following the Civil War (the Reconstruction book) went down because it was just depressing to understand the real missed opportunities, I felt justified in nudging this book's rating up slightly for the opposite reasons.

This was the first book of the series where I felt the pace of things moving too fast to do justice to certain events. For example, the space program gets barely a mention. Despite that niggle, I feel like Mr. Patterson did an admirable job of providing an overview of one of the most monumental epochs of American history, one which saw America soar as a world leader, stumble as a meddler in world affairs, saw the positive effect of earnest American presidents, and the great detriment of presidents whose motivations might not have been so pure.

[Penecks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being mostly a reader of military history, I've often skirted the accompanying social and political discourse of periods of warfare, and perhaps remain entirely ignorant of large swaths of overall human history. With this in mind I tried to plug some knowledge gaps with Patterson's Grand Expectations, a decently deep summary of the postwar period in the US, from the tail of 1945 to the immediate post Watergate world in 1974.

Given the girth of the book, this was a decent project, and I'll generally say Patterson respects the reader's time; most events received a fair share of coverage. Perhaps surprising at first, but mostly welcome, is that large events and wars are not retold meticulously, and much of the text deals with social policy, the economy, and the roles of various groups. It can be a little odd to notice the space race get maybe 3 pages of total coverage, the Vietnam war have maybe 3 battles mentioned, and advanced cold war actions basically glossed over. In a way I welcomed the author sticking to more domestic events, but some may find this off-putting.

Given the barren amount of historical education Americans receive for the time period after 1920, it is not very surprising that political shifts and policy events often seem to be "new and unprecedented". Yet even a cursory read of this book will make it obvious these cycles have been in place since the postwar balancing of power, and will probably continue. Events from the McCarthyism years, for example, can easily find equivalency in the seemingly ultra-polarized modern age.

The standout parts of the book are probably about Truman and LBJ, both having their political careers and accompanying domestic events fleshed out quite well. There is plenty of praise but also criticism of large social programs enacted by these two, with perhaps the tragic tale of Johnson's Great Society, entering as a savior for all, then seemingly rolled into the lumbering inefficient government of the 70's, where the story ends in an America distrustful of politicians and ready for the conservative sweep of the 80's, as the high water mark of postwar policy.

Patterson has a lot to cover and he does it pretty well. Undoubtedly readers may find some parts elementary or boring if they are familiar with the underlyings, but that is the curse of writing a summarized history. This work is still extremely useful for tying up any loose ends for an era characterized not only by a few popular events, but with its own buzzing background that can be felt strongly even today at all levels of life.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

" Thieu, overwhelmed by a North Vietnamese military offensive, was forced to resign on April 21, 1975. As His loyalists scrambled desperately to climb aboard U.S. helicopters, Hanoi ran up its flag in Saigon on May 1 and renamed the capital Ho Chi Minh City. South Vietnam was a state no more.
American leaders had underestimated the will to fight of the North, overestimated the staying power of the South, and misjudged the endurance of the American people. There are events in the world that not even the greatest military powers can control." pg 767 (may be a lesson here)

Volume 10 of the Oxford History of the United States covering 1945-1974. Very interesting volume for topics covered. The wins and losses of Truman coming out of World War II, thrust into the Presidency with little experience, using the A-Bomb, feeling his way through a very complicated time, on into the solid years of Eisenhower, all the cold war issues at hand, the work up of various race and human rights issues, Kennedy Presidency & assassination, LBJ and the Great Society (or disaster), voting rights for blacks, MLK & race riots, Vietnam snafu and ending with Tricky Dick Nixon, a man who could of been a contender as the greatest politician of the 20th century but his ego destroyed him.

What's not to like here, I'am politically libertarian and I found that the author was pretty even handed on most issues, pointing to failures on both sides, demystifying issues, and at times showing the differing opinions of courses of action and why they were wrong or right. Very helpful in understanding the times. READ HISTORY

[Lauren Hiebner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patterson’s work is the tenth volume in the Oxford History of the United States. This is a massive (790 pages) attempt to cover U.S. history from 1945 - 1974. The author focuses on the theme of expectations of the generations of the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s pointing out that while there was ample reason for heightened expectations in each generation, there were underlying problems that seemed to detract from accomplishment of those aspirations. A good example of this is the tremendous economic growth post WWII but also increasing poverty and an income gap between various groups; I.e. men and women, minorities and non-minorities, urban and rural and an increasing percentage of the economy devoted to the Cold War. To paraphraze Dickens, “It was the best of times and the worst of times.” Examples of the best according to Patterson were: stable society, still held long-established values like commitment to the Constitution, respect for the law, belief in necessity of equal opportunity, confidence in utility of hard work, a religious culture, a commitment to civil rights, support for spending in health, education, and Social Security, and a commitment to contain Communism. However the worst of times examples analyzed by Patterson were: widespread discrimination in jobs, schooling, and housing, poverty, increases in violent crimes and drug usage, political assassinations, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and stagflation. Patterson attempts to balance out these topics but tends to slant toward a conservative interpretation of events. Nevertheless, a good read.

[Davina · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting time period. It's fascinating to see the origins of some vexing problems in the west, particularly in the United States, and how they continue to haunt us. Certainly there were many triumphs, but note this was a period where we build a lot of dams, and highways, and other infrastructure, which is now crumbling, and we see where we failed to take care of the environment. We also see the beginning of the Southern Strategy, where the Dems and Republicans often traded members, and the net was much of the same obstruction, particularly regarding civil rights. We see too the dramatic societal changes, and many of the Tea Party today see this as these minority groups "cutting in line" with their demands for their rights. I think of how much of our current language is devoted to questions of rights, and how that differs from the not too ancient past. You also see the dilemmas these Presidents faces, as they didn't want to be the one to "lose Korea," or "lose Vietnam" to the communists, and how they failed to really understand the nationalism which Wilson championed at Versailles for Europeans, and that very nationalism the OSS used to engage locals in fights against the Japanese, and was now coming home to roost, so to speak. It's easy to read through this, with hindsight, and bemoan choices, but sometimes, hard to, given knowledge at the time, to have made different choices.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful and interesting exploration of a period of history I was a little fuzzy on. I especially like how the author would interpret the history and give informed opinions about policies and decisions parties would make. It makes for good copy as I gained a better understanding about policies that are in place today. It's a good contrast to books by H. W. Brands for example, who presents facts and policies with the criticism of them at the time, without the consensus of their impact by historians.

The author is consistent in giving full blooded assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of presidential administrations during the period. I felt like he was a little hard on Truman, who I've read alot about and deeply respect. I haven't read enough about the other presidents to know whether the author's opinions are fair or not.

My favorite parts of the book are the presidential assessments including domestic and foreign policy, the civil rights movement, and the discussion of the Vietnam War. My least favorite parts of the book were the mounds of statistics the author throws at you about the culture at large. It's just so much information in so little space that it overwhelms you. The statistical cultural analysis portions of the book forced me to give it four stars instead of five, but overall, I really enjoyed the book.

[Mike Hohrath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another installment in the Oxford History of the United States. I listened to the Audiobook version (shout out to Amazon for publishing this series as audiobooks). It took me some time to get through this one, over 30 hours of content.

The author follows the politics of post WW2 through the end of the Watergate. This was an absolutely wild and turbulent time for the U.S. of A. After WW2, Americans had, well, grand expectations for how things would go down in their new position of global super power. These grand expectations were not always met, whether it was internationally with the Korean & Vietnam war plus the whole cold war, or domestically with the counter culture and anti-war movement of the 60's, and the civil rights movement happening simultaneously. They don't call them the turbulent 60's for nothing. It doesn't get any better when Nixon takes over!


This is a accurate and detailed historical description of the period. Some things are glossed over, like the assassination of Kennedy and MLK Jr., but it is a good unbias account of the times. I don't think I'll listen to many more historical books as audiotapes, it an be challenging to absorb these tombs. That being said, others lend themselves especially well to the format, like Team of Rivals by Doris Kearnes Goodwin.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not quite as good as most of the previous books in this series. The history is there, and I certainly learned what I set out to learn in this book, but his attempt to draw everything together seemed forced and ultimately failed. The theme he was trying for was Grand Expectations. This phrase rarely appears, but appears a little more often near the end. It was clear he way trying to make points using this phrase, it just felt awkward.

The two major wars during this period, Korea and Vietnam, was certainly discussed, but not with particular depth, particularly with Vietnam. I didn't need much for these since I've read extensively elsewhere, but I was hoping for more. The previous book in this series did a remarkable job with WWII.

Ultimately this book works for a history of this time period, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it. I kept going because I was learning things, it just wasn't the most enjoyable read.

[Horace · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Truman to Gerald Ford (actually very little about Ford), from the death of FDR to Watergate, this is a period of remarkable change (quite the understatement). Consider how much our country changed from basking in the glory of WWII's victory to the fast demise of Richard Nixon (landslide 1972 election victory to resignation). The go go growth of the late 1940s and 1950s to the energy crisis of the early 1970s. From the traditional American household to the increasingly individualistic culture of the 1960s and 1970s. And that most tumultuous decade of the 1960s- Vietnam, the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK. And the change in status of African-Americans from the 1940s to the 1970s as a result of Supreme Court cases and the civil rights movement. There's a lot to unpack in this 30 year period and James Patterson handles it all in a very even-handed manner.