Menand analyzes the economic, demographic, and technological forces that drove social and cultural change in US during the twenty years following the end of the Second World War. Introducing us to the personalities at the center of this transformation-- artists and thinkers both in the US and abroad-- he shows how they exerted a powerful influence on postwar art and thought. It was an exciting period of creative innovation and intellectual debate, and it gave birth to the United States we know today. -- adapted from jacket