Goldman, The Crucial Decade–and After: America, 1945-1960 (1960)

Eric F. Goldman.
The Crucial Decade–and After: America, 1945-1960.
New York: Vintage Books, 1960.

Book Information: Google Books; Amazon.com.

First published as:
The Crucial Decade: America, 1945-1955.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.

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Author Information:

• Eric F. Goldman (1916 – 1989), Wikipedia.
• Eric F. Goldman. Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee (Rowman & Littlefield), 2001.
  [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Eric F. Goldman. The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
  [Google Books; Amazon.com.]

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Video:

I collected some links to videos addressing the period 1945-1960 in my posts for:

• Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (1996).
• McCullough, Truman (1992).

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Wikipedia Articles:

• History of the United States (1945–64).

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Goldman calls the period 1945-1955 the "Crucial Decade." In the post-Roosevelt governments would the innovations of the New Deal persist? (Goldman is a vehement opponent of the domestic policies promoted by Republicans generally and Robert Taft in particular.) In the post-World War II peace would the European oriented internationalist foreign policy of Roosevelt continue or would 1930s-style isolationism return? (Goldman's dualism of Internationalism versus Isolationism is obviously too simplistic and is an expression of the political passions prevalent when he wrote his book. The U.S. had a century of activity in the Pacific and East Asia and an even longer interest in the Caribbean and Latin America; nobody argued a for decrease of U.S. intervention in those regions. Oh, wait: the "Internationalist" Truman administration issued NSC 48/2 in 1949 which excluded Korea and Formosa from the U.S.'s East Asia defense perimeter. My point is that the "Internationalism versus Isolationism" controversy was less idealistic and more narrow than Goldman relates and was mainly focused on the scale of U.S. military and economic assistance to western Europe.) It is impossible for me to describe Goldman's book without also observing that it is political advocacy disguised as history.

For an introductory history of the U.S. during the period 1945-1960, one's time might be better spent with:

• Diggins, The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941-1960 (1988).
• Halberstam, The Fifties (1993).
• Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (1996).
• Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s (2018).

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