Volume 53, Number 19 · November 30, 2006
Selling the American Way
By John Brewer
Irresistible Empire: America's Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe
by Victoria de Grazia
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 586 pp., $29.95; $19.95 (paper)
At first sight it is a little hard to know why the astonishing economic recovery of Europe after World War II should have provoked so much controversy. Yet from the 1950s onward, few questions have been more vigorously discussed than that of how and with what consequences Western Eu-ropean nations entered the age of affluence. Commentators and critics on both the left and the right debated the new economic order, lambasting or lauding a newfound affluence and consumerism. The debate, of course, was never just about the economy, but was part of what was seen as the struggle between American capitalism and Soviet communism for the heart and soul of Europe.
Review, 5045 words
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