A sweeping history of America during the tumultuous decades between the ends of World War I and World War II, when a mainly rural, isolationist republic was transformed into a nuclear superpower and the leader of the free world.
Through the prosperous 1920s and its culture wars to the Great Crash and Depression of the Thirties, the fits and starts of the New Deal, and then the all-consuming fight to defeat fascism in World War II, the twenty-five years from 1920 through 1945 witnessed the creation of what would be known as the American century. Two towering political figures, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D Roosevelt, dominated the politics of these years in which America underwent a breathtaking metamorphosis, with all its power and trade-offs: its predominance on the global stage, its increasingly imperial government, its unprecedented affluence, and its far-flung cultural influence.
Prosperity Road captures in telling detail how war and the experiences of economic boom and bust shaped America's political expectations and its institutions. Written by acclaimed Cambridge historian Anthony J Badger, Prosperity Road is cultural, economic, and political history at its finest and most captivating.
Other books in the American History series include:
Ecstatic Nation by Brenda Wineapple
Rebirth of a Nation by Jackson Lears
Walking Giant by David S. Reynolds
The Age of Reagan by Sean Wilentz
About the Author :
Anthony J. Badger is Emeritus Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge University and former Master of Clare College. His books on the New Deal and on the American South include The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940; FDR; The First Hundred Days; Albert Gore, Sr: A Political Life and Why White Liberals Fail; and Race and Southern Politics from FDR to Trump.
Review :
"All that we are--and all that we fight about--in the 21st century can in many ways be traced to what we were and what we fought about in the 20th-century years Anthony Badger so expertly and compellingly revisits in this important new book. This is excellent, challenging, and resonant American history." -- Jon Meacham, New York Times bestselling author of And There Was Light and His Truth Is Marching On
"A masterwork! Written with grace, Prosperity Road's account unusually combines considerations of Republican Party domination during the first half of a profoundly important quarter-century with the Democratic Party's ascendency during the second. Featuring the grand figures of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt and felicitously combining domestic and international affairs, the book's gripping account of persons, politics, and policies illuminates the era's social and economic transformations together with its unanticipated state building." -- Ira Katznelson, author of Southern Nation and Fear Itself
"Never has anyone so acclaimed as an administrator failed so spectacularly as Herbert Hoover, nor has anyone so often dismissed as a dilettante succeeded so thoroughly as Franklin Roosevelt. Prosperity Road provides an elegantly written, thoughtful analysis of how these two misunderstood men, and the coalitions they represented, shaped the decades following the Great War, pushing the United States toward social justice and international leadership. Badger is an indefatigable researcher and accomplished stylist working at the peak of his powers, and Prosperity Road is a pleasure to read." -- Eric Rauchway, author of Why the New Deal Matters
"A magnificent panoramic history, written with wonderful brio and insight, sweeping from the high passions of the 1920s through the national traumas of the Great Depression to victory in World War II. At the heart of Badger's story are titanic political figures such as Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he has wise and surprising things to say about everything from the Ku Klux Klan to the emerging civil rights movement. This is a tremendous book by an exceptional historian, destined to become the definitive work in its field." -- Dominic Sandbrook, author of The Rest is History
"I can think of no better guide down Prosperity Road than Anthony Badger, who has long devoted himself to probing the astonishing transformation in American history from the 1920s to the end of World War II. By framing his story with the towering figures of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, rivals in their understandings and responses to economic catastrophe and global war, Badger brings to life the initial battle in a war between social democratic and anti-statist approaches to governance that in many ways is still being fought out today." -- Lizabeth Cohen, author of Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939
