This is an introduction to the study of America since 1945 - the period in which the US became a hyperpower. Alternate chapters provide the historical background and illuminate themes through culture and the arts, grounding students in the facts and themes before exploring more interpretive approaches. In this way, awareness of central currents in art, film, theatre, intellectual history and media is developed alongside an understanding of political and social change.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Timelines; Acknowledgements; Introduction; PART I: THE WORLD WAR AND AMERICAN POWER; American Politics from Roosevelt to Truman; 1940s: The Cultural Legacy of World War Two; PART II: THE COLD WAR AND AMERICAN CULTURE; American Politics from Truman to Eisenhower; Alienation and Affluence in the 1950s; PART III: WAR IN VIETNAM AND REVOLUTION IN THE STREETS; Kennedy, Johnson and the Crisis of American Liberalism; The Imaginative Crisis of the 1960s; PART IV: THE AMBIGUOUS LEGACY OF THE SIXTIES; American Politics from Nixon to Carter; The Clash of Two Counter Cultures; PART V: FROM THE COLD WAR TO GLOBALIZATION; American Politics from Reagan to Clinton; From the Global Village to Bowling Alone; PART VI: AMERICA AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001; George W. Bush and the Trials of American Conservatism; Hard Facts and Millennial Fictions; Index