Great leap: the past twenty five years in America

The multiple revolutions in American life
between 1939 and 1965 are the theme of
this narrative of our times: changes so
rapid and far-reaching as to be unprece-
dented not only in our experience but in
that of any nation not suddenly trans-
formed by war or plague.
1939 was a watershed year. It was the
year college boys took to eating goldfish.
Only one American in thirty-three paid any
income tax. Communists dominated certain
large and powerful labor organizations.
War broke out in Europe and the atomic
bomb project was conceived.
Since then America has become richer,
more powerful, older, and perhaps wiser.
Big business, that arch villain of the New
Deal, has experienced the corporation ex-
plosion and with it a transformation in
character. The supergiants of today are
benign, smiling and approval-seeking and
Keynes has replaced Adam Smith as our
national economic philosopher.
General prosperity and the income tax
have brought about a great leveling. Pov-
erty is still with us, but it is not epidemic.
The transformation in communications,
particularly the phenomenal rise of tele-
vision, has caused a filtering down of ideas
and attitudes formerly confined to the small
educated middle and upper class. This has
resulted not only in the "cultural explo-
sion” (and the general acceptance of psy-
choanalysis), but in a national awareness
of our involvement in international politics;
and along with the revolutions in science
and education, it has spurred that uniquely
American issue, the civil-rights movement.
Are all aspects of the vast change im-
provements? Well, no. In the process of
becoming urbanized, Americans have de-
spoiled their cities and their countryside.
Religion has become amiably homogenized.
There has been a clear-cut deterioration in
the relations between races. And the Amer-
ican image has suffered abroad. They liked
a
us better when we seemed naïve, some-
times silly-and were less powerful.
To the reader's continual fascination-
and amazement-Mr. Brooks presents not
only the startling contrasts between then
and now but a lucid analysis of how and
why this transformation occurred. The
Great Leap is a brilliant combination of
summary and synthesis, social history at its
liveliest and most illuminating.