Mata, Tiago;
(2012)
Measuring America: How Economic Growth Came to Define American Greatness in the Late Twentieth Century. By Yarrow, Andrew L. .Amherst:University of Massachusetts Press,2010.272 pp. Cloth$80.00;paper$26.95.
History of Political Economy
, 44
(4)
pp. 715-717.
10.1215/00182702-1811478.
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Abstract
The sight of economists in magazine and newspaper features, radio commentaries and TV debates no longer surprises anyone. Andrew Yarrow, historian and advocate, reminds us that it was not always so. Measuring America tells two interlocking stories of “how economic ideas came to have vastly greater influence on American culture and how these ideas dovetailed with an outlook expressed by opinion-shaping elites that the meaning and value of the United States increasingly resided in its growing, quantifiable abundance.” (p. 3) The clearest exposition of Yarrow's thesis comes when he examines high school history textbooks of the 1950s in chapter six, and shows how a grand narrative of philosophical and moral principles traced to the Founding Fathers was set aside to praise a more recent economic revolution and to imagine America defined by material plenty. Resonating with the classic contribution of Benedict Anderson (1983) on nations as “imagined community”, Yarrow offers us an imagined communion of affluence as a core theme in the 1950s and 1960s public sphere
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Measuring America: How Economic Growth Came to Define American Greatness in the Late Twentieth Century. By Yarrow, Andrew L. .Amherst:University of Massachusetts Press,2010.272 pp. Cloth$80.00;paper$26.95. |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1215/00182702-1811478 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-1811478 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author-accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Science and Technology Studies |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10201022 |
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