During WW II, some US business leaders formed organizations to plan for the postwar economy and to provide social and economic policy options for the US government. A fundamental motivation was to avoid an economic relapse into the Great Depression and a desire to continue the massive US wartime production. Diplomatic historian Whitham (Edge Hill Univ., UK) meticulously examines these various organizations, especially the Committee for Economic Development (CED), National Planning Association (NPA), and Twentieth Century Fund (TCF) … Drawing upon new archival material on the NPA and the TCF, Whitham depicts the tensions between “corporate liberals” and their New Deal vision of government involvement and business conservatives who espoused laissez-faire, which led to the emergence of “corporate moderates” in the CED that dominated the postwar years.