There's a lot of longing for "good old days" in America, the time when many people could graduate from high school and step into a well-paid manufacturing job--and send their kids to college.
The economic boom that followed World War II was long and impressive... and quite possibly, an anomaly.
Marc Levinson explains in his book An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy. It shows the factors and forces that made so many people so much money from the end of the war up to the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973. The author joins us to compare and contrast that period with other periods in American history.