The Great Boom 1950-2000: How a Generation of Americans Created the World's Most Prosperous Society
Feb 2016 · St. Martin's Griffin
Ebook
464
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
Discover the Untold Story of America's Postwar Economic Boom
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 an economic powerhouse.
As America's G.I.s returned home from World War II, many experts 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 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 start-up entrepreneurs like Kemmons Wilson of Holiday Inns and Ray Kroc of McDonalds catered to a mobile populace.
Americans began channeling 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. The continuing boom enriched 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 became 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—for themselves, for the nation, for tens of millions of citizens—all in five short drama-filled decades.
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 an economic powerhouse.
As America's G.I.s returned home from World War II, many experts 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 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 start-up entrepreneurs like Kemmons Wilson of Holiday Inns and Ray Kroc of McDonalds catered to a mobile populace.
Americans began channeling 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. The continuing boom enriched 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 became 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—for themselves, for the nation, for tens of millions of citizens—all in five short drama-filled decades.
About the author
Robert Sobel was a financial historian and Lawrence Stressin Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Business History at Hofstra University and the author of numerous books on finance, including IBM: Colossus in Transition and The Pursuit of Wealth. He died in June 1999.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
