The Postwar Moment ― Progressive Forces in Britain, France, and the U.S. After World War II

An incisive, comparative study of the development of Post–World War II progressive politics in the United States, Britain, and France

After the end of World War II, Britain, France, and the United States were faced with two very different choices: return to the civic order of pre-war normalcy or embark instead on a path of progressive transformation. In this ambitious and original work, Isser Woloch assesses the progressive agendas that crystalized in each of the three allied democracies, tracing their roots in the interwar decades, their development during wartime, the struggles to establish them after the war’s end, and the mixed outcome in each country.

A fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Woloch is a highly regarded scholar who adds the United States to a discussion that is usually focused solely on Europe. His enlightening work successfully argues that the postwar moment deserves a more prominent place in the history of progressive politics.

Isser Woloch is the Moore Collegiate Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. His books include Napoleon and His Collaborators: The Making of a Dictatorship and The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789–1820s.