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Book: Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974
Quotes of Book: Grand Expectations: The United
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  1. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    During the racial confrontations of the 1960s, An American Dilemma encountered rising criticism from activists and scholars who disputed Myrdal's optimism about white liberalism, as well as his negative statements about certain aspects of African-American culture. In the mid- and late 1940s, however, the study received virtually unsparing praise. W.E.B. Du Bois, the nation's most distinguished black historian and intellectual, hailed the book as a "monumental and unrivaled study." So did other black leaders, ranging from the sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, whose criticisms of lower-class black culture influenced Myrdal's arguments, to the novelist Richard Wright, whose bitter autobiography, Black Boy, appeared in 1945.
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  2. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    Roughly 80 percent of American soldiers in Vietnam were from poor or working-class backgrounds. Neither in college nor in graduate school-where most students received near-automatic deferments until mid-1968-they often found themselves drafted after they got out of high school.
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  3. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    By the time Nixon reached office the environmental cause had grown stronger than ever, thanks in part to media attention given to Malthusian prophets of doom. Paul Ehrlich, a professor of biology at Stanford, published The Population Bomb {1968}, which foresaw the starvation of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world during the 1970s and 1980s if population growth were not controlled.
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  4. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    Sustained by popular responses such as these, conservatives in Congress mobilized to attack an administration effort then pending to exterminate rats in the ghettos. One denounced the measure as a "civil rats bill." Another suggested that the President "buy a lot of cats and turn them loose.
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  5. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    Environmentalists had enjoyed modest successes during the New Frontier-Great Society years: a Clean Air Act in 1963, a Wilderness Act in 1964, a Clean Water Act in 1965, and an Endangered Species Act in 1966. In 1967 movement leaders coalesced to form the Environmental Defense Fund, a key lobby thereafter.
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  6. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed that the Engel decision "practically suppresses all religion, especially in the public schools." Engel and other cases did more than anything else over time to arouse the religious Right from its political quietism. Other Americans, too, thought that the justices had lost their minds.20
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  7. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    By 1967 McNamara was pacing about his expansive Pentagon office, staring at the large framed photograph of Defense Secretary Forrestal {who had committed suicide}, and weeping. By late 1967 Johnson had given up on him. The war had savaged the self-confidence of the most certain of men.53
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  8. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    After 1970, however, many American institutions-corporations, unions, universities, others-were required to set aside what in effect were quotas, a process that engaged the federal government as never before in a wide variety of personnel decisions taken in the private sector. This dramatic and rapid transformation of congressional intent took place as a result of executive decisions-especially Nixon's-and court interpretations. Affirmative action of this sort never had the support of democratically elected representatives.41
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  9. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    Members of Congress, outraged by the events at Selma, forty times interrupted his address with applause. Johnson closed by raising his thumbs, fists clenched, and proclaiming, "Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And, we shall . . . overcome.
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  10. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    Congress, responding with patriotic fervor, approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, as it was called, with only desultory debate.
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  11. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    But the Great Society did not do nearly as much to improve the economic standing of people as did the extraordinary growth of the economy. When this stopped-in the 1970s-the flaws in LBJ's programs seemed glaring. Hyperbole about the Great Society aroused unrealistic popular expectations about government that later came to haunt American liberalism.
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  12. James T. Patterson _ Grand Expectations: The United

    Moreover, Kissinger and Nixon deeply distrusted each other. Kissinger was sometimes contemptuous {behind Nixon's back} of the President. He called Nixon "our drunken friend," a "basket case," or "meatball mind." Kissinger was also given to fits of temper. After one of these tantrums Nixon confided that he might have to fire Kissinger unless he got psychological help.
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