The record of the American economy since 1945 offers an embarrassment of
riches for the historian, and Wyatt Wells has brought them together in a
compact and incisive history. His theme is how greatly many economic
circumstances changed--and how many other features remained essentially
the same. He shows how throughout the period the United States enjoyed
not only the world's largest economy but by most measures its most
diverse and sophisticated. The second half of the twentieth century
witnessed extraordinary change: the development of entirely new
industries, such as television and computers; the decline of established
industries, such as steel and textiles; the impact of international
trade and competition on growing numbers of Americans. As the boom of
the 1950s and 1960s gave way to stagflation in the 1970s, the 1980s
became a time of extensive reorganization, which in turn laid the
foundation for another boom in the 1990s. Still, as Mr. Wells notes,
industry remained in private hands; political debate consistently
returned to the same issues involving the proper role of government in
the economy; and the country remained committed to an open international
economic system. American Capitalism examines the development of
economic policy (government spending, taxes, regulation, and monetary
policy), economic structure (companies, markets, technology, and labor),
and ideas about both, explaining the complex interaction of these
factors over the past half-century. The book offers an essential short
course on American economic development over these years.
