The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good

Written by David Goldfield

Narrated by Mike Chamberlain

A sweeping and path-breaking history of the post–World War II decades, during which an activist federal government guided the country toward the first real flowering of the American Dream



In The Gifted Generation, historian David Goldfield examines the generation immediately after World War II and argues that the federal government was instrumental in the great economic, social, and environmental progress of the era. Following the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation, the returning vets and their children took the unprecedented economic growth and federal activism to new heights. This generation was led by presidents who believed in the commonwealth ideal: the belief that federal legislation, by encouraging individual opportunity, would result in the betterment of the entire nation. In the years after the war, these presidents created an outpouring of federal legislation that changed how and where people lived, their access to higher education, and their stewardship of the environment. They also spearheaded historic efforts to level the playing field for minorities, women, and immigrants. But this dynamic did not last, and Goldfield shows how the shrinking of the federal government shut subsequent generations off from those gifts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Nov 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781681689593

David Goldfield

David Goldfield is the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He is the author of many works and textbooks on Southern history, including Still Fighting the Civil War, Southern Histories, Black, White and Southern, and Promised Land.

Reviews for The Gifted Generation

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Did not finish, not because it was that bad (it wasn’t) but because I didn’t feel that I was learning anything from this history of the mid-20th century from the perspective of the (often non-WASP) US whites who benefited from an expansive, helpful government … and then oversaw its erosion into what it is now. I guess that’s appropriate, because it seems like most of us didn’t learn anything from that history, either.