When America Was Great: The Fighting Faith of Postwar Liberalism

Rating:
Summary: Good Intellectual History
Review: Kevin Mattson has written an engaging intellectual history of post World War II liberalism. This history has become relevant again today as liberals try and find what fires them, what their core beliefs are and how to translate those beliefs into real policy proposals.

Mattson focuses his book on four men to tell his story: John Kenneth Galbraith, Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and James Wechsler. These men believed in the greatness of America. However, they also believed that the country could be improved upon. They supported policies that they saw as improving the whole country, such as protection of the environment and improvement of public schools. They rejected both libertarianism and communism as being unhealthy for the entire country.

Mattson focuses mostly on liberalism and domestic policy, while I thought he could have done much more if he discussed more foreign policy. Also, he switches between a conversational and a more conventional tone. Because of these issues, as well as lax editing, this book is not as strong as it could have been. However, as a primer on this important topic, especially when many today are beginning to look back on these times as glory days in liberal thought, this is a fine place to start.