THE CRUCIAL DECADE

by Eric Goldman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 20, 1956

A useful and thoroughly readable recall of the decade 1945-55, done objectively, perceptively, and with a keen sense of its significance in the changing pattern of America. It began with a strange, uneasy peace, a relatively uncertain new president in the White House, a surge of pressure for rapid return to the old' ways. It ended with another party in power, another President, but a pattern of continuing policy- along lines of social legislation, raised standards of living, actually ""a codifying of the New Deal in domestic affairs"" -- a ""middle course"" (the term was Truman's in 1949) in foreign affairs as well. Between had been ""the acid test of savage political warfare"". Truman's early postwar years were wavering ones of reconversion and return to normal conditions on controls too rapidly; then came strong accents with the Churchill Fulton speech, the debacle over Wallace, the Truman Doctrine-immediately related to Greece, the Marshall Plan, the levelling off of economy, labor, the status of the minority groups. The Cold War held a balanced if easy peace. Then Red China moved; Russia had its first atomic explosion; the Communist hysteria mounted -- and war in Korea brought the nation back of Truman, reelected despite the pollsters. On the political front hatred of the administration mounted; McCarthyism rolled up its power; economy boomed. The scandals and the Kefauver revelations took the public mind off the stalemate in Asia, but the firing of MacArthur added fuel to the McCarthy flames. The election of Eisenhower witnessed promise of greater change than occurred, though-with the truce in Korea, the end of the Indo China civil war, the trend was to a new conservatism. But some of the old pattern persisted. The Supreme Court ruled against segregated schools. Practical men met conflicting urges in government. 1954 found Eisenhower less conciliatory, more determined to push some of the social legislation that was rooted in the New Deal, the Fair Deal. The Army-McCarthy hearing came to an end- McCarthyism was through. A quick look at current issues of 1955 -- and a chart of the changes and shifts in Administration policy at home and abroad- and recognition of the acceptance of some phase of co-existence with Russia, this winds up a long look at the ""crucial decade"". While there is much that will merit comparison with Only Yesterday, this lacks the philosophical subtleties, the sly humor of approach, the unaccented wisdom. It is definitely a bit above good reporting-little more.

Pub Date: Aug. 20, 1956

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1956

Categories: NONFICTION