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The Crucial Decade in America

Eric Goldman, author of The Crucial Decade--and After: America, 1945-1960, was a history professor at Johns Hopkins University and at Princeton University. Mr. Goldman has written articles for scholarly journals as well as for popular magazines. He is the author of a number of books, of which the most famous is Rendezvous with Destiny. Goldman's point of view is that of a historian, an intellectual and a scholar. He looks for themes, trends, and cause and effect, not for a mere telling of events. He places the events in the tenor of the times and describes the shifts in popular culture and psychology. This gives his work a hint of the point of view of a sociologist, as well.

In his preface to the book, Goldman states that two questions pressed upon him as he considered the history of the United States between 1945 and 1960. One of the questions concerned internal affairs. Would the United States continue to extend welfare and social reforms which had marked the previous decades? The other question concerned foreign affairs. Would the United States move toward "containment" and peaceful co-existence with other nations, a sharp departure from the deep-seated traditions of former years? (p. vi)

Goldman calls his work interpretive history. He holds no special theories about man or about history and has no particular bandwagon that he wants the reader to jump upon. He escapes partisanship and carefully regards the facts (p. vii). Whenever it was feasible, he sent copies of the manuscript pages to the person he had written about and asked them to verify the facts. Many people gave time and energy to keep the history straight. He supplemented manuscript information with interviews and correspondence with the men and women who made the history. His acknowledgements list 95 people, plus a mention that several persons who contributed information preferred to remain anonymous (pp. 347-348).

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The Crucial Decade in America. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 16:35, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1704689.html