Cohen

Although this was a gigantic book, I really found it interesting because there were a lot of connections that can be drawn to the city of Buffalo. Before I go any further I have a few questions that pertain to the book. (FYI I'm not the one posting questions this week) Can you write a history that you have lived through? And does Cohen convince readers that this "Consumers' Republic" influenced the U.S. more than the Cold War? Throughout the book I was expecting Cohen to come back to this question and to show directly why this culture influenced the U.S. more than the Cold War did, but in my opinion she did not engage directly with this.

Barring these questions Cohen makes a really simple, but powerful argument. Throughout she was able to balance issues of class, race, and gender using economics as a lens. Like Dan, I found how she engaged with both African Americans and women to be especially poignant. I'm not really sure about the general historiography, but I thought that it was really important how she demonstrated how the status quo was kept post-WWII. (i.e. GI Bill and the class makeup of the various suburbs.)One of the other things in this book that I found important was her discussion on the treatment of blacks. Unfortunately, I think too many high school text books stress the idea of the Jim Crow south as opposed to the idea of the Jim Crow U.S. Her commitment to show that the north was not immune to this ideology, was important and shows why teachers need to keep up to date on what they are teaching.