Chafe argues that World War II constituted a major discontinuity or “turning  point” in America’s history. (viii)  Our participation effected startling  economic, technological, social, and political/diplomatic changes that Chafe believes would have been impossible otherwise.   The war ended the Great Depression and the nation’s economic stagnation that the New Deal had failed to remedy.   According to Chafe, World War II “created the framework for the next thirty years of economic development.” (7)   Defense preparations led to the implementation of Keynesian economics, which, in turn, stimulated capital investment and produced nearly full employment.  American workers amassed large amounts of savings from their wartime earnings.  Strict rationing of consumer goods for the duration of the conflict created a massive future demand for these goods.  After the war ended, consumers exercised their purchasing power to obtain the desired goods, as well as homes and automobiles that had remained out of the reach of most ordinary Americans since 1930.  Educational and subsistence benefits provided by the G.I. Bill made higher education and technical training available to a greater portion of the population; furthermore, business and housing funds loaned by the Veterans Administration stimulated long-term economic growth that would endure until the mid-1960s.

Technological developments resulting from World War II closely paralleled and intertwined with economic changes.    Wartime defense research, funded by the government, produced significant developments in electronics, aeronautics, chemicals, and nuclear physics that would favorably revolutionize private industry in postwar years.  America shifted from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, with a resultant decline in blue-collar employment and phenomenal growth in white collar, managerial positions.  Continued government funding of research and development tied to the Cold War and the Korean War  produced  what Chafe, quoting Richard Hofstedter, calls a “military Keynesianism”.(113)

World War II also created major social discontinuities for American women and for African-Americans. In direct contrast to the Great Depression credo that women belonged in the home, government propaganda encouraged women to enter the industrial labor force to replace male workers drafted for military service. Women responded enthusiastically to the opportunities for greater occupational choices and increased wages.   Middle-aged, married women employed in non-traditional defense and manufacturing jobs altered the traditional demographic profile of the American working woman as “young, single, and poor.” (13)  Chafe does point out , in careful counterpoint to these changes, that much progress remained to be made in the definition of women’s roles , the availability of childcare, opportunities for advancement, and wage equality between men and women.  The manner in which these issues were addressed in the ensuing years intrinsically affected the reemergence and growth of the women’s movement.  African-Americans experienced similar social upheavals.  Wartime employment relocated blacks in large numbers from the rural South to urban areas in the western, midwestern, and  northern United States.  Though the armed forces still practiced segregation, black soldiers received combat training and overseas assignments, exposing them to opportunities and integration abroad that did not yet exist at home. Black community leaders championed the “Double V” campaign, calling for victory over fascism abroad and racism at home.  Chafe emphasizes the “common theme” of these changes as “the interaction of some improvement with daily reminders of ongoing oppression.” (20)  The conflict between the two forces produced the necessary ideological impetus that sparked the growth of the civil rights movement in the next decade.
 
World War II also drastically changed the American diplomacy and politics in years to come.  Pearl Harbor abruptly ended the nation’s isolationism.  The development and implementation of the atomic bomb propelled America into a position of world leadership.  U.S. diplomats and politicians proclaimed that we had a “moral mission” to contain communism, resulting in the Cold War, overt military intervention in Korea and Vietnam, and covert military operations in Iran, Guatemala, and Cuba.  This “moral mission” determined the course of  foreign policy from 1945 until 1989, with significant domestic political consequences for all ensuing American presidents.

Chafe further contends that 1968 “constituted the pivotal dividing line of the postwar years.” (viii)  During this year, social reform movements- civil rights, black power, New Left, women’s liberation, and the Chicano farm workers- demanded alteration of the basic fabric of American society, as they transformed their goals from reform accomplished by working within existing institutions to revolutionary transformation of  these institutions. Leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, echoed this disillusionment in changes in their personal lives and public beliefs.  Conservatives reacting to these demands sought to preserve the existing institutions, society, and moral values.  The resultant conflict, exacerbated by America’s increasingly unpopular military involvement in Vietnam, threatened to destroy American society and established political institutions.  The assassinations of King and Kennedy altered the course of history.  Their deaths immobilized and demoralized their followers, allowing conservatism to triumph with the election of Richard Nixon as President.  According to Chafe, 1968 marked the last time in postwar American history that positive social reform appeared possible through political action.  Nixon’s presidency quelled the tide of social reform started by the New Deal, and established conservative political programs that endure up to the present day (1990, for this edition).  Order prevailed, but at the cost of progressive social equality for marginalized and oppressed groups in America.

 Most crucially, Chafe argues that there were “moments of possibility” that defined the course of American history after World War II. (506)  To Chafe, these “roads not taken” constituted as crucial of a choice as the roads that America ultimately pursued. He identifies these critical “moments” as the period immediately following World War II, in 1963-1964 during the end of Kennedy’s presidency and the beginning of Johnson’s, and the year 1968.  In the postwar period, women, African-Americans, and labor union members could have further developed their wartime gains to accomplish significant social change.  However, the growing specter of anti-communism and McCarthyism coupled with the lack of organization and governmental support allowed the possibilities of this moment to pass unfulfilled.  The second “moment of possiblity” occurred when Kennedy began to change the course of his presidency shortly before his 1963 assassination.  Instead of continuing his fierce devotion to inflammatory Cold War rhetoric and increasing involvement in Vietnam to “contain” the threat of communism, he instead “systematically questioned many of his own most deeply rooted assumptions about the Cold War,” instigating a nuclear test ban treaty and rethinking America’s commitment to support South Vietnam. (506)   Kennedy acknowledged the power and accomplishments of the civil rights movement by initiating  legislation to combat racial and economic inequality (the Civil Rights Bill and the War on Poverty).   After his death, Lyndon Johnson ensured the enactment of this legislation as Kennedy’s historical legacy, hoping to use these accomplishments as a springboard to create his own lasting political and historical legacy.  Though Johnson literally performed more legislative miracles than any other twentieth-century president, Chafe contends that his deceitful  escalation of the Vietnam war squandered valuable economic resources needed for domestic programs, thus destroying that opportunity “to achieve more equality at home than had occurred at any other time in the twentieth century.” (507)  As previously discussed in this review, 1968, in Chafe’s opinion,  constituted the demarcation between the possibility of effective social reform through political action and the reality of conservative continuity of the status quo.

 Chafe utilizes his own work and the work of other historians to produce a synthesis of  U.S. history since World War II, examining a broad scope of  events, people, and social reform.  His conceptual framework reflects his conviction that “gender, class, and race constitute fundamental reference points for understanding how power and resources are divided in our society and what degree of change can be said to have occurred during a given period.” (vii) Though he also considers diplomatic and political history, he examines them within his conceptual context.  The Unfinished Journey employs the ideology of the New Social History, focusing upon groups- women, minorities, workers, the poor- that “traditional” accounts neglect to acknowledge as active agents of their own history.

 Chafe’s cogent discussions of accomplishments and failures of these marginalized  groups highlights one of the book’s two outstanding strengths.  He presents credible arguments to support his proposed conceptual framework, demonstrating throughout the work that the intersection and interaction of  gender, class, and race determined  America’s historical fate.  The sections dealing with the origins and growth of the civil rights movement and women’s  liberation are especially effective, presenting  balanced, informed accounts reflecting  the changing perceptions of the roles of African-Americans and women in American society.

 Chafe also adeptly demonstrates the importance of the individual in history.  His succinct examinations of U.S. presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to George Bush proffer substantial examples of the relationship of their personal values and moral character (or the lack thereof) to their performance in the Executive Office.  Roosevelt’s deep inner belief that the responsibility for postwar world peace rested completely with him, Truman’s frankness, and Kennedy’s idealism sharply contrast Johnson’s deceitfulness about Vietnam, Nixon’s constitutional chicanery to allay his paranoid fear of powerlessness, and Reagan’s “teflon presidency” with no discernible ideological center. Nonetheless, each man’s actions, determined by their inward perceptions and beliefs,  consequently exerted considerable influence on the course of American history.  Chafe, however, does not limit his demonstration to politically prominent leaders.  Consistently adhering to his social history ideology, he considers the historical influence of “ordinary individuals” such as Fanny Lou Hamer, John Lewis, Casey Hayden, and Charlotte Bunch equally significant.

 The Unfinished Journey manifests numerous weaknesses that seriously undermine its effectiveness and usefulness by historical scholars.  Chafe maintains an annoying vagueness about dates throughout the book.  The reader cannot rely on his narrative to accurately place events in time and space, as he often casually refers to a historically significant event occurring during a presidential administration, with no further clues to as to the exact month, date, or year.  Chafe also chooses to utilize a bibliographical essay at the end of the book, instead of footnotes or endnotes.  Their omission proves confusing, as he often fails to credit quotations to specific persons.  When he does attribute the source of his quotations, he rarely identifies that person clearly within a specific historical context, presuming the reader possesses prior knowledge or at least name recognition of the person quoted.  Sloppy editing further compounds the book’s problems.  The Unfinished Journey abounds with spelling errors, including a particularly obvious one on the inner title page proclaiming the subtitle of the book as American Since World War II.  In another example, Chafe spends two pages referring to Salina, Kansas as “Salinas, Kansas.” (20)  Such careless mistakes call into question Chafe’s credibility as a historian, not to mention his editor’s competency.

 Even more critically, Chafe exhibits a strong personal bias that causes him considerable difficulties in presenting factual information.  He seems unwilling to allow the reader to form their own conclusions based on impartial evidence.  This is especially apparent in his choice of language.  He characterizes General Douglas MacArthur  as “the reckless, demagogic, and probably pathological figure who conceived of himself as the savior of the Far East.” (255)  He consistently refers to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s as “the most significant social movement in all of American history”, conveniently forgetting to acknowledge the precedents and reforms established by the abolitionist movement of the previous century. (146)  His standard for selecting  the majority of quotations throughout the text apparently required the inclusion of at least one profanity or a sexual or scatalogical reference,  with preference given to those containing both elements.  A quote from his discussion of the counterculture best evidences this proclivity when he quotes the “Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers” as  proclaiming  that “the fucking society won’t let you smoke your dope, ball your woman, wear your hair the way you want to.  All of that shit is living, dig, and we want to live, that’s our thing.” (409)  Though  the realistic presentation of  American history (warts, profanity, sexual innuendo, and all) is not intrinsically objectionable and even desirable, Chafe’s  opinionated, unexpurgated rendering of America’s postwar years left this reviewer desirous of more impartiality and discretion in future editions.

 These unfortunate shortcomings limit the academic value of the book to use at the upper undergraduate level (with a strong caution to students to read critically and analytically) or for beginning graduate students to peruse comparatively with another more chronologically accurate account of this period, such as James Patterson’s Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974.  Non-academic historians might find Chafe’s book entertaining, as he maintains a lively, readable style, employing a great deal of popular vernacular.  Perhaps the book’s greatest value lies in its example of how a well-intentioned effort to render the history of America’s past half-century in the context of gender, race, and class could be shipwrecked on the rocky shoals of editorial dereliction and disproportionate personal bias.