The Creative Society - and the Price Americans Paid for It

Louis Galambos is Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, where he also serves as Editor of the Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower and Co-Director of The Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise. He is the author of numerous books on modern institutional development in America, the rise of the bureaucratic state and the evolution of the professions, most recently Medicine, Science, and Merck (with Roy Vagelos, 2002). He is co-editor of two Cambridge series and has received widespread recognition for his development of the 'organizational synthesis' of modern US history.

• Preface; 1. 1931; 2. Life, death, and learning in the cities; 3. Toward a new economy, 1890–1930; 4. State crafting – American style; 5. Confronting the world; 6. Winners and losers, 1890–1930; 7. New Deal experiments; 8. Fighting on God's side; 9. A new aristocracy, 1946–1969; 10. The suburban conquest of the 1960s; 11. Empire in the American century; 12. The tattered empire of the 1970s; 13. Cracked core; 14. The American solution; 15. Conservatism – rhetoric and realities, 1981–2001; 16. The hegemony trap; 17. The American dream, 1981–2001; 18. The creative society in danger.

'Louis Galambos delivers a dazzling history of the modern United States as formed by its managers, scientists, diplomats, planners and lawyers. The hopeful message is that, more often than not, American expertise and innovation will save the day.' Jay Hancock, economics columnist, The Baltimore Sun