In The Great Boom, historian Robert Sobel tells the fascinating story of the last 50 years when American entrepreneurs, visionaries, and ordinary citizens transformed our depression and war-exhausted society into today's economic powerhouse. As America's G.I.s returned home from World War II, many of the nation's best minds predicted a new depression—yet exactly the opposite occurred. Jobs were plentiful in retooled factories swamped with orders from pent-up demand. Tens of thousands of families moved out of cities into affordable suburban homes built by William Levitt and his imitators. They bought cars, televisions, and air conditioners by the millions. And they took to the nation's roads and new interstate highways—the largest public works project in world history—where Kemmons Wilson of Holiday Inns, Ray Kroc of McDonalds, and other start-up entrepreneurs soon catered to a mobile populace with food and lodgings for leisure time vacationers. Americans and their families began to channel savings into new opportunities. Credit cards democratized purchasing power, while early mutual funds found growing numbers of investors to fuel the first postwar bull market in the go-go '60s. At the same time the continuing boom enriched the fabric of social and cultural life. A college education became a must on the highway to upward mobility; high-tech industries arose with astonishing new ways of conducting business electronically; and an unprecedented 49 million families had become investors when the 1981-2000 stock market boom reached 10,000 on the Dow. The Great Boom is the first major book to portray the great wave of homegrown entrepreneurs as post-war heroes in the complete remaking and revitalizing of America. All that, plus the creation of unprecedented wealth—or themselves, for the nation, for tens of millions of citizens—all in five short drama-filled decades.

In his bestselling book, The Great Boom Ahead, published in 1993, Harry Dent, one of the world's most prescient economic prognosticators, stood practically alone in forecasting a new age of prosperity emerging in the 1990s and extending into the new century. Dent foresaw a booming stock market, falling mortgage rates, and the resurgence of America as the premier global economic superpower. All of his predictions have come to fruition. Now, in The Roaring 2000s, Dent focuses his visionary eye on the full spectrum of changes that will follow in the wake of the burgeoning turn-of-the-century economy. According to Dent, how and where we work and live is about to change more drastically than at any time in our history due to the convergence of the mainstreaming of the Internet and other technologies and the peak spending years of the aging baby boomers. This will result in nothing less than the greatest boom in history and an unprecedented opportunity for investors and entrepreneurs, great buys in real estate, and a wealth of high-quality lifestyle choices for the savvy people who anticipate these changes. We will we such rapid and exciting change as we have not seen since the dizzying pace of the productivity revolution unleashed by the assembly line in the Roaring Twenties. Dent not only offers detailed investment strategies aimed at exploiting the coming boom for the next fifteen years but he also explains future trends in the job market, technology, demographics, and real estate. He foresees the next great population migration and explores the radically different business and organizational structures that will be the offspring of the Information Age. At the crux of these changes is the fundamental shift to a new network model wherein front-line human "browsers" focus on intimately understanding the needs of a unique segment of customers and coordinate the products or expertise of specialized back-line human "servers" to customize solutions. With new research tools applied to the trends that have developed within the last few years, The Roaring 2000s reveals concrete predictions and indepth insights into the next decade, including: A Dow that continues to soar and will eventually reach at least 21,500, and possibly 35,000, by the year 2008 The importance of "gazelles," small- to medium-sized, high-growth companies, which today are creating most of of the jobs in this country The rapid future economic development in countries in die Far East, South America, and Eastern Europe, and select areas of Africa, and what that means for investment, employment, and business growth opportunities now The Roaring 2000s also describes the lifestyle changes these developments will inspire, including: The New American Deam -- why changing techologies could mean a return to small-town living and which nine types of boomtowns will offer the highest quality of life in the decades ahead Investment strategies that will help readers get the most out of a rapidly changing world It is essential, Dent explains, to understand the magnitude and nature of the forces changing our economy and lifestyles in order to take advantage of the invaluable, emerging opportunities for significantly improving ones quality of life. The Roaring 2000s is a necessary guidebook to the not-so-distant future.

Predicting the decline of Japan and the re-emergence of the United States as the most powerful economy on the planet, the Harvard economist offers readers practical advice on taking advantage of the situation.

This book complements and expands on the commentary andconclusions of the author's initial inquiry into the modern era ofmedia-made culture in The Visual Focus of American Media Culture inthe Twentieth Century (FDUP, 2004). From the 1890s on to the 1920sand the Depression and World War II years, society's pervasivelycommunal focus demanded idealized images and romanticizedinterpretations of life. But the communal imperative, as it was impactedon by evolving social change, harbored the seeds of its owndisintegration.

Farewell to Prosperity is a provocative, in-depth study of the Liberal and Conservative forces that fought each other to shape American political culture and character during the nation’s most prosperous years. The tome’s central theme is the bitter struggle to fashion post–World War II society between a historic Protestant Ethic that equated free-market economics and money-making with Godliness and a new, secular Liberal temperament that emerged from the twin ordeals of depression and world war to stress social justice and security. Liberal policies and programs after 1945 proved key to the creation of mass affluence while encouraging disadvantaged racial, ethnic, and social groups to seek equal access to power. But liberalism proved a zero-sum game to millions of others who felt their sense of place and self progressively unhinged. Where it did not overturn traditional social relationships and assumptions, liberalism threatened and, in the late sixties and early seventies, fostered new forces of expression at radical odds with the mindset and customs that had previously defined the nation without much question. When the forces of liberalism overreached, the Protestant Ethic and its millions of estranged religious and economic proponents staged a massive comeback under the aegis of Ronald Reagan and a revived Republican Party. The financial hubris, miscalculations, and follies that followed ultimately created a conservative overreach from which the nation is still recovering. Post–World War II America was thus marked by what writer Salman Rushdie labeled in another context “thin-skinned years of rage-defined identity politics.” This “politics” and its meaning form the core of the narrative. Farewell to Prosperity is no partisan screed enlisting recent history to support one side or another. Although absurdity abounds, it knows no home, affecting Conservative and Liberal actors and thinkers alike.

This wide ranging book provides readers with a reliable and lively guide to contemporary American political practices, processes and institutions. Essays in the proposed volume will cover phenomena such as the Tea Party upsurge in the Republican Party, Obama’s health care reforms, recent changes to campaign funding emanating from the key Citizens’ United Supreme Court decision, US foreign policy after the War on Terror, Obama's presidential strategy and issues relating to polarisation and partisanship in US politics. This work is essential reading for all students of American Politics and US Foreign Policy.