The Great Boom 1950-2000

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.