My title, Grand Expectations, tries to capture the main theme of this book, that the majority of
the American people during the twenty-five or so years following the end of World War II
developed ever-greater expectations about the capacity of the United States to create a better
world abroad and a happier society at home. This optimism was not altogether new: most
Americans, living in a land of opportunity, have always had great hopes for the future. But high
expectations, rooted in vibrant economic growth, ascended as never before in the 1950s and
peaked in the 1960s, an extraordinarily turbulent decade during which faith in the wealth of the
United States—and in the capacity of the federal government to promote progress—aroused
unprecedented rights-consciousness on the home front. America's political leaders, meanwhile,
managed to stimulate enormous expectations about the nation's ability to direct world affairs.
More than ever before—or since—Americans came to believe that they could shape the
international scene in their own image as well as fashion a more classless, equal opportunity
society.