Dwight Macdonald’s American Century

When was America great? Despite all that divides Americans today, I suspect a large cross-partisan majority of us, if pressed, would locate the nation’s modern apogee somewhere in the years between 1940 and 1970. The period began with our victory in the “Good War.” What followed was a thirty-ish year stretch of widely shared prosperity marked by high levels of trust and civic engagement, which now furnishes abundant material for nostalgists of all stripes. Conservatives can look back fondly on the era’s stable nuclear families, high fertility levels, and family wage; progressives can cite the combination of high marginal tax rates and booming economic growth, while finding further inspiration in its high union density. Even those who would lament the period’s race and gender stratification still find the template for their activist enterprises in its vibrant social movements.