Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

“[T]he solution to the economic crisis of the end of the war turned out to be simply not letting the war end,” writes historian Walter Johnson.51 The Cold War was a real, long war, and millions of people died. To speak of the American “postwar” economy or state into the 1950s is not to talk about a country at peace, but a country finished with peace altogether, a nation that has embraced a permanent conflict.