“Revolution” is a strong word, often overused. It implies an overturning of a previous condition or order; a dramatic reversal; a 180-degree turn, or something nearly like it. Yet it is no misuse of the word to describe as revolutionary many changes in American life that occurred during the first quarter-century or so after the United States entered World War II. Most of the changes waxed and endured through the rest of the century, sometimes in the face of strong counterrevolutionary forces. By the end of the century, American society would be transformed at almost every level, from the deeply personal to the far reaches of international engagement.

Nearly all of the revolutions of our half-century owed largely, in some cases mainly, not to great groundswells of grassroots activism but rather to the work of relatively small groups of leaders. “Elites” would not be too pointed a word. They did their work from within some of the least democratic institutions of the country: its universities, its research centers, its corporate boards, its independent regulatory agencies, and its Supreme Court. Most often those leaders challenged the inclinations, and often the opposition, of the nation's democratic or majoritarian forces. That fact would contribute to the counterrevolutionary trends of the last quarter of the century, a central part of the story that this book has to tell.

At the very outset of “our period,” precipitously and enduringly the country abandoned its longstanding aloof, unilateral nationalism, its traditional refusal to engage in formal partnership with other nations for joint international purposes.